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Dear Sir/Madam,

I am pleased to share with you our latest issue in the IPA Observer 
series, on "Outward Investment Agencies: Partners in Promoting Sustainable 
Development".

Outward investment agencies (OIAs) promote and service investment abroad. 
They include outward investment promotion agencies, development finance 
institutions, and investment guarantee schemes. For decades, OIAs have 
been catalyzing foreign direct investment (FDI) to developing countries, 
often in challenging investment environments.

For this fourth issue of the IPA Observer, UNCTAD reviewed 101 OIAs and 
found that 45% indicate on their websites that they provide some level of 
services particularly for investing in the Sustainable Development Goals 
(SDGs). Nearly all regional and multilateral OIAs provide SDG-related 
services, compared to two out of five OIAs in developed economies and one 
out of five OIAs in developing and transition economies. Three case 
studies are presented from OIAs with SDG-related programmes in the 
Netherlands, South Africa, and the United States of America.

The SDGs defined in September by the international community to face the 
common global economic, social, and environmental challenges in the next 
15 years will have large resource implications, especially for developing 
countries. UNCTAD’s 2015 Investment Policy Framework for Sustainable 
Development defines a paradigm shift in investment policymaking and 
provides an Action Menu for investment promotion in SDG-related sectors.

IPA Observer No. 4 examines to what extent OIAs are facilitating FDI into 
SDGs and how partnerships between OIAs in home countries and inward 
investment promotion agencies in host countries could help both 
institutions to better promote and facilitate SDG investment projects. 
Together with the expertise and services that investment promotion 
agencies can offer, partnerships between OIAs and investment promotion 
agencies can provide synergies to attract significant numbers of SDG 
related projects and foster their performance and success.

Best regards,

James Zhan
Director, Investment and Enterprise
Team leader, World Investment Report
UNCTAD
Palais des Nations, Geneva
Tel: +41 22 917 5797
www.unctad.org/diae; www.unctad.org/wir