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