International Trade Institute, Taitra

Due to the rapid growth of imports and exports in the 1970s and 1980s, Taiwan's economy was enjoying an upswing. Constrained by the prevailing regulated educational system, business courses and foreign languages had long been treated as separated disciplines in this country’s tertiary education. As a result, the supply of young professionals trained with the two-pronged approach fell far short of the demand of the local business community. Therefore the Executive Yuan approved the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ (MOEA) petition to set up the International Trade Institute (ITI) under TAITRA’s jurisdiction. TAITRA invited representatives from the government sector, private sector as well as academic circles for their consulting and came up with the framework of the International Business Administration Program (IBAP), in which university or college graduates looking for a career in international trade are recruited for one to two-year intensive training. The leap from the already established “On-the-Job Training Courses” to a full-time ”Pre-career Training Program” was a great one. However, it was soon discovered that the two programs complemented each other and over a short period of time, TAITRA metamorphosed into a full-fledged training organization. In the meantime, it has been expanded from the Taipei World Trade Centre in Taipei to Hsinchu, Taichung and Kaohsiung Campuses.