Financial support is available for enterprises and individuals looking to futureproof their skillsets in maritime
Both the Sea Transport and Marine & Offshore Industry Transformation Maps (ITMs) make training and education a key pillar, calling for initiatives to attract skilled young people to the maritime industries and for the existing workforce to keep its skills up-to-date to remain competitive.
Under the Sea Transport ITM, more than 5,000 new jobs will be created in the next 10 years, while the Marine & Offshore ITM aims to create 1,500 new jobs by 2025.
MCF-Manpower Development is part of MPA’s Maritime Cluster Fund (MCF) initiative that supports Singapore’s maritime cluster’s industry manpower and business development efforts that specifically focus on training and workforce capabilities in the maritime sector. In 2018, MPA announced a S$100M (US$74M) top-up of the fund.
Aimed at both companies and individuals, MCF Manpower Development focuses on both developing and enhancing employees’ skills, and has three main pillars.
Training@MaritimeSingapore is intended to upgrade knowledge and expertise of local maritime personnel through attendance of MPA-approved training programmes. This can be in the form of external training such as short and certifiable courses, with co-funding for short courses set at 50% and for short/certifiable courses at 70%. It also covers internal training, providing 50% cofunding support for maritime enterprises to provide inhouse training to employees.
Talent@MaritimeSingapore encourages companies to invest in developing expertise by career development programmes and attachments. These can take the form of industry attachments in local or overseas offices, overseas attachments for employees to acquire specific skills or market knowledge, with cofunding support set at 50%. It also includes management associate programmes, to support local talent preparing for management and leadership positions, with cofunding support again set at 50%.
InvestManpower@MaritimeSingapore is aimed at maritime enterprises and industry associations, and encourages adoption of well-structured HR and training infrastructure, tools and processes to attract talent, and support its training and development. This can be in the form of industry and strategic-level development, encouraging organisations to work together to attract talent and improve workforce capabilities that will bring about industry-specific or national-level benefits to Singapore’s maritime sector. Alternatively they could be enterprise-specific, aimed at establishing good HR practices, tools and training infrastructure for enterprises, with cofunding support set at 50%.
A Singapore university has launched a series of courses focused on maritime business operations.
Developed by Singapore Management University’s (SMU) International Trading Institute and the Lee Kong Chian School of Business, the Maritime Business Operations Track (MBOT) is available for students majoring in operations.
It is a multidisciplinary programme that provides students with a firm foundation in business operations, providing sector-specific knowledge and contextualised skills for maritime-related roles.
There is a big focus on experiential learning opportunities such as internships, overseas industry-study missions and site visits to maritime companies on the course.
Taught by both SMU faculty and industry professionals, the track’s courses cover topics including supply chain management, international trade law, port-focal logistics and maritime operations, tanker chartering, ship finance and maritime supply chain. Industry professionals will also offer non-credit short courses offering students further education on specific areas of the maritime industry.
The MBOT was launched in January 2019 and is open to new students as well as those going into the second year of their course.
The new track was developed following discussions with MPA and maritime industry partners who felt a combination of operations skills and maritime knowledge was an ideal preparation to enter the industry in Singapore.
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