Reduced rates of return will lower investment rates.

The first is the high return on foreign investment in China.

Foreign direct investment

Foreign direct investment

The Benefits of Chinese FDI

The representative of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) focused on the investment climate and the creation of an environment conducive to FDI.

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.

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

Beware of FDI Protectionism

The past 40 years have demonstrated the remarkable return on investment to be gained in collaborative scientific research.

This latter phenomenon represents negative outflows of FDI from host countries back to Singapore.

Investment policies should extend to both domestic and foreign direct investment.

See the World Investment Report 2004 for details on the latest trends in foreign direct investment and BPO.

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.

The Government would be following up on the implementation of the recommendations of the IPR, which related to modernizing the FDI entry regime, strengthening Board of Investment (BOI) core functions and reforming the tax regime on investment.

The former include the decentralization of FDI promotion, the development of training programmes for staff involved in investment promotion, and initiatives to educate civil society about FDI and its development impact.

) 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 main factors that motivate firms from the South to invest abroad are similar to those that motivate FDI from developed countries.

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

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

Two new studies on New developments in African FDI and the World Investment Directory Africa are in preparation.

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?

Impact of OFDI on competitiveness of Singapore enterprises

He highlighted the importance of accurate and timely data for policy makers, and said that UNCTAD should increase its technical assistance to the African countries in respect of FDI data collection and reporting systems, so as to enable them to improve the quality of the data.

At least 38 US states now host FDI projects from China, and competition for Chinese investment has intensified as states budgets have contracted.

Policy measures that support OFDI 13

OFDI and enterprise competitiveness

Implementing the IPR recommendations could improve Benin's capacity to attract FDI and benefit from FDI by reforming the regulatory and institutional investment framework.

The bottom line is that the investment climate for foreign direct investors is becoming less welcoming.

The UNCTAD secretariat introduced the central features of the IPR, starting with the recent trends in foreign direct investment.

The Minister of Investment of Egypt set out the Government's objectives and policies with regard to attracting foreign direct investment.

OFDI from the BRIC countries Brazil, Russia, India and China is now growing rapidly and looks set to dominate OFDI activity from developing countries in the future (Sauvant 2005).

The level of Chinese FDI flowing into Africa at present is staggering.

Conclusion 18