SENATOR Joel Villanueva on Thursday announced that all his proposed increases to the 2026 budget of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority—including funding for Technical-Vocational Education and Training programs and additional assessor positions—have been adopted into the amended General Appropriations Bill.

During the plenary session, Villanueva stressed the need to reform TESDA’s budget structure, noting that its current lump-sum format limits transparency and hinders effective allocation for specific training programs and personnel needs.

“Right now, what we have is a lump sum, talking about the entire budget of TESDA. We tackle a lot of issues here—not only the community-based training program, we also tackle the plight and shortage of our assessors, not only attending to our students in the K-12 program but also for the entire Technical and Vocational Education and Training Sector,” Villanueva said.

He asked the committee to confirm whether the adopted committee report includes provisions to increase funding for training, empowerment, and the creation of new plantilla items for TESDA assessors.

“May we know if the new committee report adopted our proposal to increase the budget for training, empowerment, and the creation of additional items for our assessors? Because I remember we were only having around 16,000 assessors attending to all Filipinos not only nationwide but also worldwide,” he added.

Villanueva, a long-time advocate of skills development and job generation, emphasized that beefing up TESDA’s capacity—particularly by expanding its pool of qualified assessors—is essential to raising the quality of technical-vocational training and strengthening the global competitiveness of Filipino workers.