VIENNA, 23 November - UNIDO releases a new online course on investment project preparation and appraisal (IPPA). The course aims to support investment promotion agencies and investment promotion institutions in creating and developing bankable investment opportunities to enhance financial flows through mobilizing domestic investments and attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) to accelerate sustainable economic growth in their countries.

The course seeks to enhance the development of investment opportunities, including public-private partnership (PPP) projects to capitalize on the different expertise of large enterprises, with a focus on high-impact social development and environmentally friendly projects, targeted at sectors/value chains to advance economic competitiveness. The IPPA course is an ideal complement to the Gender Lens Investing course, which promotes the importance of investing in women, through support for SMEs, and women-owned businesses.

The IPPA course was piloted successfully in two capacity-building programmes:

1. For the Bank of Khartoum (BOK) including COMFAR focused on enhancing the IPPA skills of the staff of IRADA, which is a subsidiary of BOK, to enable them to spearhead the development of bankable projects in Sudan. The participants (63% of whom were women) commended UNIDO for the highly innovative course, delivered in the Arabic language. A gender-balanced permanent Unit was established within BOK/IRADA to undertake various investment promotion-related activities and to provide such services to the business community. 
2. For investment promotion agencies in LDCs. This programme aimed to improve the business climate and investment conditions in LDCs, and to attract sustainable “quality” FDI and ultimately enhance the sustainable development of the LDCs, particularly focusing on what IPAs can do in specific value chains/industrial sectors. In the context of the capacity development of LDCs and the establishment of the executive IPA College, UNIDO developed the IPPA training course and delivered the capacity-building sessions to 70 officials from investment institutions and government ministries, of which 45% of the participants were women from 20 LDCs.

The self-paced e-learning course is now accessible here.

The course flyers are accessible here.

For further information on the IPPA training contact: 
Stefan Kratzsch 
Industrial Development Officer,
Division of Fair Production, Sustainability Standards and Trade (IET/PST)
Email

For further information on the capacity building programme in Sudan, contact:

Jessica Neumann
ITPO Expert
Investment and Technology Promotion Office - Germany
Email