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Dear Colleagues,
 
UNCTAD has just released a special issue of its Investment Policy Monitor 
exploring investment laws around the world.
 
For many countries investments laws are a core policy instrument to 
promote and regulate investment. Together with international investment 
agreements (IIAs), they constitute the basic legal framework for 
cross-border investment in many countries. Often, these laws and IIAs 
contain similar provisions.
 
UNCTAD research finds that at least 108 countries have an investment law 
as a core instrument to govern investment, almost all of which are either 
a developing country or an economy in transition. Even though investment 
laws generally share the same objectives, their content and overall 
approaches differ significantly.
 
Key findings from this study include:

Most investment laws have investment promotion as their main objective, 
while only a few also deal with investment facilitation.
Sustainable development is an explicit goal only in a small minority of 
them.
Investment laws tend to show an imbalance between the coverage of investor 
rights and obligations.
Investment laws often cover the same issues as IIAs and more than half of 
the laws provide access to international arbitration.

The importance of investment laws calls for a deeper analysis of their 
content and their coherence with other investment-related policies and 
international investment treaties.
 
For more details on these and other findings I invite you to download the 
Special Issue of the Investment Policy Monitor here.
 
James X. Zhan
Director, Investment & Enterprise
United Nations Conference on Trade & Development
http://investmentpolicyhub.unctad.org
http://www.worldinvestmentreport.org/ (World Investment Reports)

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