Colombo Plan - The Plan Now

The Plan Now

Over the years, while adhering to the concept of human resource development and South-South cooperation in addressing issues of economic and social development, the programme content of the Colombo Plan has been changing to take account of the needs of member countries in a fast changing world economic environment. In the early years, the training programmes were more of a long-term nature, while recent programmes have been focusing on providing advance skills and experience sharing aimed at arriving at the best practices in different fields of economic and social activities as a means of good policy making and governance. The current programmes of the Colombo Plan are in the areas of public policy formulation in an environment of globalisation and market economy, private sector development as a prime mover for growth and in drug abuse and prevention in member countries. The Colombo Plan also provides skill development opportunities for technicians in middle level through another of its programmes the Colombo Plan Staff College for Technician Education located in Manila.

In her 2010 speech, Dato' Patricia Yoon-Moi Chia states: "the current Colombo Plan looks very different since our restructuring and revitalization in 1995. As we continue to build upon our past successes, the new Colombo Plan uses cooperation among developing member countries or South-south cooperation between the developed member countries and developing member countries, to underpin all our activities. Since our restructuring in 1995, we have now provided 16,082 scholarships to 23 member countries for both long-term and short-term training programmes."