The country has sought to attract FDI for many years, establishing special economic zones for foreign investment.

Sri Lanka had the potential to attract more FDI and to increase the benefits from it.

The other major advantage of such regional groupings has been their ability to attract foreign direct investment. Since the early 1990 s, Mercosur has managed to mobilize 5.9 of world FDI inflows.

Experts also discussed the role of incentives in attracting R D related FDI.

Similarly, some of the preconditions, such as elimination of malfeasance and corruption, reduction of bureaucratic regulations, openness of the economy and an effective State, apply equally to the encouragement of development assistance and of foreign direct investment.

Foreign direct investment

The efforts to attract FDI are, more often than not, marred by the conspicuous absence of a vibrant domestic investment base in developing countries.

They do so partly in the hope of attracting much needed services FDI.

Foreign direct investment

The issue of the size of host countries was mentioned by various experts as a factor in attracting R D related FDI.

The Benefits of Chinese FDI

Uribe has also proven to be a strong economic administrator, attracting increasing flows of foreign direct investment to Colombia.

The same groups of countries will also benefit from technical services related to capacity for market access and conformity assessment through the application of the industrial competitiveness and trade service programme components.

It allowed for an exchange of views in a friendly setting and provided feedback on policies to Governments keen on attracting FDI.

In the case of ASEAN, intraregional FDI accounts for close to one fifth of the total FDI.

Beware of FDI Protectionism

Other policy instruments must complement FDI in order to generate the resources necessary for development, and policies to attract FDI must be balanced with others in the areas of trade and finance in order to reach a healthy equilibrium of policies.

The government has also sought to attract foreign investment and promote economic diversification.

Not surprisingly, Turkey s capacity to attract foreign direct investment is now comparable to other fast growing emerging market economies.

Second, they were largely unable to attract FDI that could bring forth spillovers of employment generation and technology transfer into the domestic economy.

Ireland showed the importance of foreign direct investment.

The impact of FDI on development

Emerging FDI from developing countries

Obstacles to OFDI

Foreign direct investment flows can, and should, be encouraged.

) To the extent that these agreements protect investment and open up industries for FDI, they facilitate OFDI from developing countries.

FDI by SMEs involved evaluation of investment locations based on a set of variables which could be clustered under markets, costs, natural resources, infrastructure framework, policy framework and business promotion and support factors.

The shift of FDI to services

Outward FDI from developing countries

Table 2. FDI outflows as a percentage of gross fixed capital formation in selected economies, 2001 2003a (concluded)

The case of South South FDI

Drivers and motivation of OFDI

The financial crisis and recession may dampen the rise of FDI protectionism, as countries seek capital to shore up local firms and increase investment to help them promote economic recovery.

Luxembourg and Spain, both major recipients of FDI in 2003, received lower FDI inflows last year.

The Expert Meeting will focus on the issues of FDI data compilation and analysis and its role in the formulation of FDI policies from a development perspective.

Moreover, North Korea is actively courting foreign investment.

Some experts stressed that policies had been traditionally oriented to attract FDI and were not really defined as promoting outward FDI.

Does OFDI increase competitiveness of firms and how could competitiveness from OFDI be measured?

Privatization and deregulation did attract some FDI, albeit mainly to extractive sectors or the acquisition of public utilities.

Policy measures that support OFDI 13

OFDI and enterprise competitiveness

One of the reasons for this is that in most Latin American and Caribbean countries, FDI policies focus on attracting large quantities of FDI and do not pay much attention to the nature of FDI.

In India, the existence of reputed national research institutes and the management style of local companies, for example, were also mentioned as specific factors attracting FDI in R D.

report of the expert meeting on the impact of fdi on development

Source UNCTAD, FDI TNCs database.