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
