Development training

The project was originally designed to help individual firms to increase their production and export of nontraditional products. The National Council of Businessmen (CNHE) received a grant to implement the project. In 1988, it was amended to include greater participation of public sector and nongovernmental organizations and the Foundation APEC (FUNDAPEC) was identified to implement this component. The project has resulted in important positive impacts on individual participants and their employer institutions. As expected, the training of CNHE participants had an important positive impact on private sector employers, although a similar relationship between FUNDAPEC programs and their impact on public sector institutions was not found. Conversely, FUNDAPEC training had a greater impact on project objectives (exports, product diversification, and earnings) than did training provided to the private sector. Few differences in training impact by sector of employment were evident in either the CNHE or the FUNDAPEC programs. The project succeeded despite the unreliability of some of its assumptions. In particular, the use of Enterprise Training Plans (ETPS) proved less valid for the Dominican Republic than for other countries. There were many reasons for this. (1) Many sponsor institutions considered completion of an ETP to be just an application requirement rather than preparation of a future reference document. (2) Many firms received little or no TA and failed to prepare proper ETPs. (3) ETPs tend to define individual needs rather than organizational needs. (4) Information contained in many ETPs has not been extensively used in preparing training programs and in using skills acquired through training. In addition, several assumptions about ETPs proved questionable as evidenced by their failure to: identify firm level constraints; propose training which addressed identified constraints; and provide training that responds to identified needs. In some cases, participants even failed to return to their sponsoring institutions. However, as the project evolved, improvements in the quality of ETPs rendered the original project assumptions more viable. Lessons learned are that training should focus on sectors and not individual firms or institutions. Such an approach will maximize the impact and results. In addition, training programs should be specifically designed and participants selected to meet the specific needs identified.