The Educational Testing Service (ETS) developed the TOEIC test to measure achievement in using English in a business setting. The Asahi Shimbun national daily's evening edition interviewed Yasuo Kitaoka (北岡靖男 Kitaoka Yasuo) who was the central figure of the Japanese team that conceived the basic idea of the TOEIC test.
According to an Aug. 11, 2009 Japan Times article, "In the 1970s, Kitaoka began negotiating with ETS to create a new test of English communication for use in Japan. ETS responded that it required a nonprofit organization to work with as their partner. Kitaoka tried to enlist the help of the Ministry of Education, but their bureaucrats did not see the need for a new test to compete with the STEP Eiken, an English test already backed by the ministry. To overcome this opposition, Kitaoka received help from his friend, Yaeji Watanabe. Watanabe's influence as a retired high-ranking bureaucrat from the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (renamed the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, or METI) proved crucial to TOEIC's establishment.
Watanabe had remained in contact with his old ministry while working on the board of directors for the World Economic Information Services (WEIS) and as chairman of the Japan-China Economic Association, both public-interest corporations operating under MITI. Watanabe declined an interview request, but his memoirs describe how he overcame Ministry of Education opposition to the TOEIC by taking cover "behind the ministry of trade shield." Watanabe convinced his old ministry it should play the lead role in establishing a new English test, and formed a TOEIC Steering Committee under the WEIS umbrella. Members of the committee included other retired MITI bureaucrats and influential business leaders.
Government support secured, ETS began developing the test in 1977. In 1979, English learners in Japan filled in the first of many TOEIC multiple-choice answer forms."
ETS's major competitor is Cambridge University, which administers the IELTS, FCE, CAE, and CPE.