Capacity building assistance is an important strand of India's development partnership programme. The Government of India provides capacity building support to other friendly countries in various forms such as civilian and military training programmes in India, training on-site abroad, deputation of Indian experts, establishment of centres of excellence in IT and vocational training centres.
Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) programme, instituted in 1964, now covers around 160 partner countries from Asia, Africa, East Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean as well as Pacific and Small Island countries. The ITEC Programme comprises mostly of short term training courses organised annually across Indian public institutions in various streams for govt. officials and working professionals. The Programme has grown organically from about 4000 training slots in 2006-07 to around 14000 slots (including defence training) in 2019-20. During 2019-20, civilian training slots were offered under ITEC in over 383 courses across 98 institutionsin a wide and diverse range areas. These include disciplines such as Engineering and Technology; Government Functions; Environment and Climate Change; Agriculture; Banking, Finance, Accounts and Audit; English Language; Health and Yoga; Petroleum; ICT; Journalism; Management and Leadership; Power, renewable & Alternate Energy, including solar; Rural Development; Women Empowerment etc.
New modalities like e-ITEC, ITEC-Onsite and ITEC executive have been included in the bouquet of ITEC offerings from 2018 onwards.