Preface i

List of Tables iii

List of Figures iii

1. Introduction 
1. Data and Information on foreign training 
2. Classification of foreign training 

1. Channeling procedures of training offers

1. ERD coordinated training offers
2. Project related foreign training
3. Direct foreign training

2. Duration of foreign training

1. Training offers for less than two weeks
2. Training offers for 2 to 32 week's duration
3. Training offers for more than 32 weeks

3. Summary of training offers 
4. Donors role in foreign training 
5. Distribution of training offers 
6. Coordination of foreign training by ERD 
7. Some issues related to foreign training 

1. Donors 16
2. Common problems relating to Foreign Training 

Appendix 1: ERD Foreign Training Coordination Procedures 

Appendix 2: Foreign Training Offers by Donor 

Appendix 3: Foreign Training Offers by Ministry 

Appendix 4: Foreign Training Classified by Donor and Ministry 

Table 1 Summary of Training Offers by Channeling procedures and Duration

Table 2 Distribution of Training Offers by Donor

Table 3 Top Ten Donors of Foreign Training 

Table 4 Classification of Foreign Training by Ministry 

Table 5 Distribution of training Offers to Top Five Ministries 

Table 6 ERD Training offers by the Top Ten Donors 

Figure 1: Distribution of training offers to the Top Five Ministries 

External Resources Department (ERD) is pleased to present a report on "Review and Analysis of Foreign Training for 1998".

The report comprises a summary of different types of foreign training opportunities available to Sri Lanka, the procedures adopted in the selection of candidates for such training opportunities and an analytical review of the distribution of training awards among respective government agencies and the private sector. The Report also presents current issues related to coordination of foreign training opportunities by the ERD and donor agencies.

The purpose of this review is to improve and sustain the transparency of the selection process of candidates for foreign training opportunities and objectify accountability of the respective institutions involved in the process.

By the publication of this report, ERD intends to disseminate information on the availability and distribution of foreign training opportunities among stakeholders with the aim that the country will accrue maximum benefit of such opportunities.

This is the first time the ERD is publishing this kind of information. It is hoped that this maiden publication will serve as a reference to facilitate the process of the selection of foreign training opportunities available to Sri Lanka. Your comments would be most welcome to improve our endeavor.

Sri Lanka receives foreign training offers every year. They are mainly from multilateral and bilateral donor agencies. These offers provide opportunities for staff in public sector institutions to follow foreign training, which includes postgraduate training, participation in seminars, conferences and workshops. Since recently, the private sector is also included in the foreign training scheme to a limited extent.

As foreign training offers come from different sources, they are classified according to the channeling procedure and the duration of training. According to the channeling procedures, training offers are classified into three categories: (a) training offers channeled through the Department of External Resources (ERD), (b) project related offers and (c) direct offers. In terms of duration, training offers are classified into three categories: (a) short-term (less than two weeks) (b) medium term (2 to 32 weeks) and (c) long term (more than 32 weeks).

The purpose of this report is to provide information on training offers that Sri Lanka received from foreign donors in 1998. This report is prepared from the data on foreign training available with the ERD and from the information collected from a few selected donors that provide training and from the ministries that received such foreign training. The report describes the sources of these offers, their duration and the distribution of the offers by the relevant ministries. In addition the coordination procedures followed by the ERD concerning the training offers are summed up in Appendix 1. The information contained in this report is intended to assist both donors and recipients of foreign training to understand the role that ERD plays in the coordination and distribution of training offers according to the needs of the agencies and the availability of training offers.

The report gives a summary of training offers received by Sri Lanka in 1998. Some of the issues related to foreign training are also briefly discussed in the report. Appendices 2, 3 & 4 give an analytical presentation of information on all training offers received by Sri Lanka, such as training offers by donor, training offers by ministry and ministry allocation under each donor, in terms of training duration and the method of channeling.

1. Data and Information on Foreign Training

The database on foreign training is developed from the information that the ERD collects and receives from donors and ministries. Until 1998, ERD also used the existant information in the Prime Minister’s approval forms, which the recipients submit prior to their leave for foreign training. In order to minimize errors in the database, confirmation on training placements was also obtained from respective ministries and donors.

Accurate information is available on training offers channeled through ERD. However, in the case of project related and direct offers, the information is extracted from data provided in the Prime Minister’s approval forms. As the project related offers require clearance from the ERD, data on project related offers is likely to be more complete than direct offers. In the case of institutions, where there are no procedural requirements for the approval of the Prime Minister, ERD lacks complete information on foreign training opportunities received by them. These are some limitations of the database on foreign training used in this review for 1998.

The following is a brief account of all foreign training offers received by the country in 1998, according to the records maintained by the ERD. Section 2.1 discusses foreign training in terms of the channeling procedures and section 2.2 in terms of the duration.

1. Channeling Procedures of Training Offers

1. ERD coordinated training offers

Foreign training offers channeled through ERD are included in this category. These offers are provided mainly by bilateral and multilateral donor agencies. ERD's coordination holds two main responsibilities. The first is to refer training offers that it receives from donors to ministries for submission of nominations. The second is the submission of nominations to the donor agencies. Final selection of nominees is normally undertaken by the respective donors.

2. Project related foreign training

Almost all development projects implemented by various ministries or government agencies funded by donors contain a foreign training component. Training placements obtained under development projects are financed by grant or loan components. The training offers are made to the respective project officers who are directly involved with the implementation of the project with a view to improving their managerial and technical skills. Training offers are also made to a limited extent to direct beneficiaries of the project in case such as farmers who are related to the particular project, which aims at improving agricultural productivity. The project related training offers are mostly made by multinational organizations such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB), International Development Association (IDA) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). The bilateral donors that provide project related offers are the government of Japan, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the Federal Republic of Germany etc.

Although the selection of candidates for these training offers is the responsibility of the donor and the implementing agency, government clearance is sought for leave purposes, as a formality by the implementing agency, as these training programs involve foreign exchange from project funds.

3. Direct foreign training

Direct training offers are arrangements between a donor and a recipient agency or an individual recipient. These offers fall into two categories. Some offers result from long standing commitments with specialized agencies, which provide training in professional, academic and technical fields to some public sector institutions. Historically, such agencies have maintained links with public sector institutions providing training facilities in the professional and technical fields that are well known internationally. The World Health Organization (WHO), for example, is one such donor in the health related fields offering their professional experience through training programs to institutions involved in health services in the country. This explains the reason for the Ministry of Health and Indigenous Medicine receiving 127 offers from a total of 196 WHO offers to Sri Lanka. The balance offers from WHO are also received by institutions, which maintain long standing professional contacts with WHO.

The other category that is important in terms of direct offers is related to education. Most of these direct offers result from long-standing linkages of international academic institutions with the universities in the country. They also deal directly with Sri Lankan universities in providing training opportunities to the staff in universities.

The reason for the higher allocation of training offers made to ministry of Education & Higher Education, Health & Indigenous Medicine and Provincial Councils & Local Government is largely due to direct training offers they receive. The major multilateral donors in this category include World Health Organization (WHO), Asian Productivity Organization (APO), Commonwealth Fund for Technical Cooperation (CFTC), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) and other United Nation Agencies. Among the bilateral donors, India takes the lead followed by the United Kingdom. There are also a number of bilateral donors in this category with only a few offers.

Direct offers are not coordinated by the ERD. Since direct offers are received only by a selected number of ministries, they result in an uneven distribution of training among ministries.

Training offers for less than two weeks are referred to as ‘short term’ offers. These provide opportunities mostly to middle level and senior public servants to attend seminars, conferences, workshops and other special programs. Most of these programs are aimed at providing short term training to update and improve technical and managerial skills.

Out of the three categories, the short-term category provided 1319 offers, which was the highest number of offers in 1998. Nearly all donors provided training offers in this category. The number of short term offers accounted for 52% of the total training offers and it indicates the extent of its importance in foreign training opportunities to the country in 1998.

Foreign training offers included in this category are referred to as "medium term" offers. They provide opportunities for candidates in public sector and private sector institutions to follow training courses at foreign universities, technical institutions or other similar institutions.

The medium term category accounted for the second highest training offers in 1998. Although the majority of donors provided training opportunities in this category, only a few donors offered more than 10 training opportunities.

The third category, which is referred to as "long-term" training, provides opportunities to follow a program towards a Diploma or a post graduate degree. A few of these offers are also available for staff in academic institutions or public sector organizations to acquire academic qualifications leading to Master's or Ph.D. in foreign universities.

About one third of donors provided long-term training in 1998. With 195 offers in 1998, the training offers in this category accounted for about 8% of the total offers. Only about eight donors provided more than ten offers.

3. Summary of Training Offers

Foreign training offers received by the country totaled to 2542 in 1998. The number of training offers that was channeled through ERD amounted to 695, project related offers to 653 and direct offers to 1194. Table 1 classifies total training offers according to the channeling procedure and the duration of training. In the distribution of training by channeling procedure, almost an equal percentage of offers were received by the ERD & Projects. Direct channeling procedure received a much higher share than the other two.

Table 1: Summary of Training Offers by Channeling procedures and Duration

Duration of Training	Number	%	Channeling procedure of Training	Number	%
More than 32 weeks	195	8	ERD	695	27
Between 2 to 32 weeks	1028	40	Project related	653	26
Less than 2 weeks	1319	52	Direct	1194	47
Total	2542	100	Total	2542	100

The above table also shows that foreign training is largely dominated by short-term and medium-term offers.

 

4. Donors Role in Foreign Training Offers

Sixty-one organizations provided foreign training opportunities to Sri Lanka in 1998. Table 2 classifies all donors into seven categories in terms of the number of training offers.

The category with less than 10 offers included 22 donors that are about 37% of the total number of donors. The next category, which offers between 10 and 19, included 12 donors. These two categories taken together accounted to nearly half the number of donors in 1998.

1. Includes training offers made by Japan International Cooperation Agency.
2. Includes project-related training under ADB and IDA loans.

The category with more than 150 offers were by 4 donors. Two multilateral and three bilateral donors provided training offers between 100 & 149. Appendix 2 lists all foreign donors who provided foreign training in 1998. Table 3 gives the breakdown of offers by the top ten donors. These ten contributed to 61% of the total training in 1998 and, of these, four were multilateral while others were bilateral donors.

Public sector institutions are the major recipients of foreign training offers. Whilst all ministries benefit from foreign training, some ministries receive a larger share than other ministries. Appendix 3 provides the allocation of offers received by respective ministries according to the channeling procedure and the duration of offer.

Table 4 classifies the ministries according to the number of training offers they received in 1998. The category with 10 to 29 offers includes nine ministries, the highest number out of the 31 ministries. The category with less than 10 and between 30 to 49 offers, includes five and four ministries respectively. These three categories jointly account for 18 ministries representing more than 58% of the total ministries. The majority of the training offers received by the ministries in these three groups were for short-term training. Most of their training opportunities were from offers received by ERD. Out of the total of 270 offers received by these 18 ministries, 163 (60%) were in the ERD coordinated category.

Out of the total training offers in 1998, five ministries, namely ministry of Education & Higher Education (E & HE), Provincial Councils & Local Government (PC & LG), Health & Indigenous Medicine (H & IM), Public Administration & Home Affairs (PA & HA) and Housing & Urban Development (H & UD), accounted for 1430 offers or 56% of the total. Table 5 gives the breakdown of these five ministries in terms of the channeling procedure and the duration of offer.

These five ministries account for 218 offers channeled through ERD: 452 project related and 760 direct offers; representing 33%, 69% and 64% of their respective totals. In comparison with the other two channeling procedures, ERDs share accounted by these five ministries was relatively small. In the case of Education and Higher Education its share was only 8% while the shares of project related and directs offers were 20% and 72% respectively.

As pointed out earlier, academic institutions coming under the Ministry of Education and Higher Education obtain direct training offers from various donors through long-standing contacts that they continue to maintain. Of these five ministries, ERD contributed its highest allocation of 31% to the Ministry of Housing & urban Development. As shown in Figure 1, both Education & Higher Education and Health & Indigenous Medicine Ministries have received nearly 70% of their allocation from direct offers. Therefore, the number of training offers they received was higher than that of other ministries.

The Ministry of Education & Higher Education received 593 training offers in 1998, the highest number of offers of all ministries. This total was made up of 47 ERD offers, 120 project related offers and 426 direct offers.

Among the educational institutions that received foreign training, Peradeniya, Colombo, Kelaniya and Sri Jayawardenapura Universities and higher education institutions such as the National Institute of Teacher Education accounted for a substantial allocation of the ministry total. A large number of direct offers were received by universities and they were mostly for postgraduate education. In the education sector the majority of the offers came from development projects implemented in 1998 covering teacher training, general education, and English language training for teachers. The Ministry of Education & Higher Education received training offers from 52 of 61 donors in 1998. The Ministry stands exceptional as a single ministry to receive the largest number of offers in 1998.

The Ministry of Provincial Councils & Local Government received the second largest allocation of foreign training in 1998. As the Provincial Councils cover similar functions of the central government that have been devolved to them, the allocation to the Ministry of Provincial Councils & Local Government is not only large, but spreads to a variety of fields and sectors. This ministry received a total of 308 training offers in 1998 through all three channeling procedures. ERD offers contributed to 20% of the total offers while project related and direct offers accounted for 47% and 33% respectively. Of the total offers, 213 were short-term offers, 88 medium term offers and seven long-term offers. The allocation received by the Ministry of Provincial Councils & Local Government from all the three sources indicated a wider representation from both major and minor donors. The number of donors that provided training for this ministry stood at 23 in 1998.

The Ministry of Health & Indigenous Medicine sector received 227 offers and could be ranked third in terms of the number of offers received by a ministry. The majority of these offers came from the World Health Organization (WHO) which provided 127 offers, accounting for 56% of the ministry's total. As explained earlier, the Ministry of Health receives a larger share of foreign training from WHO because of the links established between the ministry and WHO. About 62% of the offers belonged to short term category. The ministry received no long-term training offers in 1998. The concentration of training offers mainly to WHO meant that the number of annual training offers received by the ministry largely depended on this source. There were 19 donors providing foreign training to this ministry in 1998.

The Ministry of Public Administration & Home affairs received 163 offers from all three channeling procedures and ranked fourth in terms of the total offers received by a ministry. The distribution shows that the ministry received 47 through ERD, 83 project related and 33 direct offers. The short term offers dominated foreign training in this ministry with 96 offers representing 59% of the total training offers received. With 15 long term training offers, it ranked third in terms of long term training offers received by all ministries. Out of the 61 donors, 29 contributed to foreign training.

Housing & Urban Development

The Ministry of Housing & Urban Development was the fifth largest recipient of foreign training in 1998. It received 139 offers, 43 channeled through ERD, 66 project related and 30 direct offers. The offers received to the Ministry of Housing & Indigenous Medicine were mostly related to projects, as this ministry had a number of development projects financed by multilateral agencies such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Nearly half the offers were in the medium-term category.

The balance of foreign training offers totaling to 1112 was distributed among the other 26 ministries. Of the 695 offers provided by ERD in 1998, these ministries received 477 offers or 68 %. Projects related offers were accounted for 201 or 31% and direct offers 434 or 36% of their respective totals.

Many of these ministries have received less than 50 training offers in 1998. The Ministry of Agriculture & Lands and the Ministry of Finance & Planning were the only two (out of the 26) that received more than 100 offers in 1998.

6. Coordination of Foreign Training by ERD

In 1998, about 36 multilateral and bilateral agencies provided foreign training through ERD. Around 80% of ERD training offers were extended by 10 donor agencies. Table 6 gives the breakdown of the top ten donors.

Table 6: ERD Training offers by the Top Ten Donors

Donor	Total	% of Donor Total
Government of Japan (JICA only)	172	96
Government of India	76	42
Government of Netherlands	65	64
Government of Sweden	47	43
UNDP	40	32
Government of Korea	39	66
Government of Thailand	38	53
Colombo Plan	38	93
Government of Rep. of Germany	33	44
Commonwealth Fund for Technical Cooperation	28	39
Total	576	-
% of total offers received by ERD	83	-

When training offers are received by the ERD, it sends the details of these training offers to ministries that it considers most appropriate to receive the training according to the field of training specified by the offer. The selection of ministries to receive the information of training offers, is extracted from the data collected from ministries through a survey titled "Foreign Training Opportunities" conducted by the ERD during the second quarter of every year. The information regarding training needs contained in this survey is processed to identify the foreign training requirements of the ministries.

When a training offer is made, the procedure followed by the ERD is the collation of the field of training and other requirements of the offer with the information collected from the survey. Appropriate ministries are then invited to submit nominations for the particular training offer. Ministries are requested to send all or up to 3 applications for each training offer. This policy has been adopted to prevent the ministry from taking inordinate time in the selection of applicants. The responsibility of selecting candidates lies with the donor that provides training. However, all applicants are ranked according to criteria adopted for this purpose. Appendix 1 provides details of procedures followed by the ERD in obtaining applications for training offers and their ranking.

Although ERD has no direct role in the selection of candidates for foreign training, it still plays a prominent role by ranking the applications that it receives from ministries. In this commitment the ERD distributes offers among ministries according to the requirements and submits all applications received for each offer to the respective donor after ranking them.

This procedure enables to eliminate or minimize the non utilization of training offers made available for the specified year by donors, it expedites the selection process and ensures transparency in its distribution of offers and selection of candidates.

While the ERD is committed to maintain an equitable distribution, its ability to adhere to this commitment is limited by a number of constraints. Since it has to act within these constraints, the number of offers that the ministries receive is less than their needs. This problem applies to all ministries including those that receive a larger share of training offers. The following are some of the constraints.

Limited Offers

A major constraint is the limited number of offers that are channeled through the ERD. As mentioned earlier, it coordinated only about 27% of the total offers in 1998. It has very limited responsibility in the case of project related and direct channeling procedures, which constituted the majority of offers in 1998. Because of the limited number of offers, it is difficult to fully accommodate the foreign training needs of the ministries. Under the circumstances, a strong effort is made by the ERD to allocate training to the most appropriate institutions.

Requirements

Most of the training offers received for distribution among ministries have specific requirements in terms of academic qualifications, experience in the field of training etc. Some of the training offers are limited to specific fields or sectors. In such cases, it is the policy to direct these offers to ministries that meet such requirements. A substantial share of foreign training offers falls within this category.

The majority of the offers, often more than 90%, is determined by the donor and is available under regular programs. Consequently, ERD has no choice regarding the selection of offers from donors, but to accept what they offer for distribution among ministries.

There are, however, some exceptions. Donors such as the Government of Japan and the Government of Korea offer opportunities in their training programs to select training according to the requirements of ministries. The Government of Japan offers this opportunity by providing the entire list of training programs conducted by Japanese institutions involved in foreign training programs, currently totaling to about 470, and allowing the Government of Sri Lanka to select from this list according to the requirements. At present, about 250 programs have been selected from this list by the Government of Sri Lanka. In addition, the Government of Japan also provides group training in specific fields for groups consisting between 5 to 20 participants.

The Korean Government also offers a wide range of training opportunities, about 60 programs at present, in order to allow the Government of Sri Lanka to select from this list according to the requirements. About 20 programs, selected by the Government, are currently available to Sri Lanka.

Age Limit

All long term foreign training offers are subject to an age limit. While this limit generally remains around 40 years for males and 45 years for females, some donors set a lower age limit around 30 to 35 years. There is some flexibility to accommodate exceptionally qualified candidates above the age limit, but donors prefer candidates with a longer working life. In the case of the age limit, policy of the ERD is to select candidates who satisfy the requirements of donors.

Late Submission

Late submission of applications of candidates by ministries deprives the opportunity of selection for training offers. Although applications of qualified candidates of the category of late submissions are also submitted to donors, they may not consider them unless there are no suitable candidates among others. When applications are late or not submitted with the necessary approvals of the ministries, the chances of getting a placement for foreign training is remote.

Incomplete Applications

An incomplete application is another problem encountered when applications are processed for submission to respective donors. The applicants are required to provide complete information in order to rank them according to the suitability of the candidates. As the time is limited for processing of applications, the applications with incomplete information is not taken to be considered.

7. Some Issues Related to Foreign Training

The following is a summary of issues that emerged from both donors and recipients during this review.

1. Donors

Coordination of the ERD with donors with regard to foreign training is conducted in a satisfactory manner. However, there were instances where donors reported that applications submitted by candidates were incomplete. An incomplete application takes extra time to process since ERD or the donor will have to contact the candidate to obtain the missing information. This situation would prevent the government in obtaining the total number of available training opportunities

The candidates are required to return immediately after the completion of training. However, a few donors indicated that some candidates who had attended for training had not returned to the country after the completion of their training programs. But, this problem appears to be less prevalent at present than in the past.

A declining trend in foreign training offers was observed from a number of donors. This situation is the result of from budgetary constraints experienced by them and the need to cut expenditure across all sectors including foreign training. This problem is likely to affect both ERD coordinated offers and direct offers which will further limit the training opportunities to ministries in the coming years.

The following is the summary of common problems related to processing of foreign training applications

A frequent complaint about training offers is the inadequate time given for selection of candidates by the respective ministries. In certain instances this is unavoidable as the time available for ERD to process applications is limited. In some ministries, the selection of candidates are carried out through internal advertisements which requires a longer time to process foreign training applications. This problem can be solved to some extent by maintaining a record of suitable candidates for any training offer that would be available in the future.

Longer time periods are also required for ministries with regional branches, as the information has to be collected through regional heads of the ministries and departments. Education, Health, and Agriculture are some important ministries with the island wide distribution of regional branches that are frequently affected by time constraints in regard to the submission of names by the closing date.

In general the time available to ERD for processing and submission of applications to donors is very limited. It is mainly due to this constraint that it requests ministries and other government agencies to submit all or maximum of three applications without spending extra time for lengthily and tedious selection in the ministries concerned. There is little rationale for ministries to spend time on selecting individual candidates as the final selection of candidate will be done by the donor according to the criteria set for the training program. The ERD will submit all applications for each offer to the donor after ranking them according to the requirements of the offer. In the case of training courses relevant to Provincial Councils, the ERD adopts the policy of sending information not only to the Ministry of Provincial Council, but also to all Provincial Councils & Local Government in order to expedite the process.

Preparation of a human resources development plan could also help ministries, particularly with those with a greater demand for foreign training. This plan will avert problems that they encounter at present regarding the limited time for the submission of names to ERD. This will help the ministries to identify suitable candidates at short notice and submit applications on to the ERD time for foreign training.

There are different age limits specified by donors for training programs. If the nominees are not within the specified age limits there is a high probability of their applications being rejected.

ERD conducts an annual survey of foreign training requirements of the pubic sector by sending out a circular titled "TA 100: Foreign Training Opportunities".

The Circular contains a list of training offers that are likely to be made available to Sri Lanka by donors for the coming year and training offers that were made available to Sri Lanka in the past two years on a regular basis. The TA 100 provides general guidelines to the ministries regarding the eligibility criteria of candidates by donors. This includes age and English language requirements. It also includes a format for the line ministries and agencies in respect of the submission of foreign training requirements. The Circular is sent to ministries by March 31^st of each year. Secretaries and heads of agencies are requested to submit sine-qua-non information regularly for available foreign training offers to the ERD. The Circular does not include overseas seminars and workshops, which are of less than two weeks' duration. Training offers outside the regular programs are referred to relevant ministries and agencies as and when they are received by the ERD.

The purpose of this survey is to collect information on training needs of ministries and agencies so that the most appropriate ministries are invited to send nominations when training offers are received by the ERD. This reduces the processing time of applications since the ERD has a list of ministries and agencies, which require training in the selected fields.

The selection of training offers from the ERD list requires the ministries to identify offers which are of direct importance and in particular, useful to the functions of the ministry. Each selection of training offer needs justification with particular emphasis on its relevance to the ministry.

The information on training requirements collected through the survey is used for the selection of ministries to invite nominations for training offers. When an offer is received by the ERD, from a donor it is matched with the information collected from the ministries. ERD sends information about the training offer to selected ministries and invites applications from these ministries. The ministries are requested to submit all or up to 3 applications received for each offer. Each applicant must complete ERD Form 2, which collects relevant information of the applicant in terms of personal details, academic qualifications, work experience and past foreign training. Once this information is received by the ERD, it processes each application in terms of the following criteria.

The ranking criterion consists of seven categories. The first is to determine the usefulness of the service of the applicant to the agency and the duration of the applicant’s service in the government and the present post. The relevance to the applicant is assessed in terms of his/her present work and whether the position that the applicant currently holds is matched by the requirement of the offer. The third is to determine whether the agency can benefit from the proposed training. The next three categories evaluate the applicant in terms of his/her ability (academic qualifications), keenness (whether the postgraduate course is pursued while working) and need (necessity for upgrading knowledge and technical know how). The last category is to decide whether the applicant has received previous foreign training. In the case of long-term training, any applicant who has already received long-term foreign training is not entitled to receive any further long-term foreign training. In the case of short-term training, applicants who have received previous foreign training (whether short or long term during the last three years) are given low priority. Those who have not received foreign training in the past are allocated 25% of the total allocation of 100.

Each applicant is ranked in terms of the aggregate marks received for all seven categories. These names are then submitted to donors for the selection of candidates for foreign training.