This report provides an assessment of how foreign direct investment (FDI) contributes to Canada’s sustainable development, particularly in the areas of trade, productivity and innovation employment, job quality and skills, diversity and inclusion, and the low-carbon transition. It provides initial policy considerations on how investment promotion and facilitation can improve such impacts.
The result of two years work by 19 experienced policymakers and two Nobel prize-winning economists, 'The Growth Report' is the most complete analysis to date of the ingredients which, if used in the right country-specific recipe, can deliver growth and help lift populations out of poverty.
This book presents an overview of the key debates that took place during the Economic and Social Council meetings at the 2007 High-level Segment, at which ECOSOC organized its first biennial Development Cooperation Forum. The discussions also revolved around the theme of the second Annual Ministerial Review, "Implementing the internationally agreed goals and commitments in regard to sustainable development."--P. 4 of cover.
This edition of the OECD Sovereign Borrowing Outlook reviews developments in response to the COVID-19 pandemic for government borrowing needs, funding conditions and funding strategies in the OECD area.
Drawing on good practices from OECD and non-OECD countries, the Framework proposes a set of questions for governments to consider in ten policy fields as critically important for the quality of a country’s environment for investment.
Uzbekistan has achieved sustained growth through its gradual transition to a market-based economy through cautious economic policy reforms. Despite its gradual approach to development challenges, the country experienced the smallest output decline among former Soviet economies and enjoyed high rates of economic growth from 2004 to 2015, largely driven by the high prices of its major export commodities. However, the drop in the global prices of many key commodities in recent years have severely impacted Uzbekistan's economy. Under these circumstances, the new government introduced major reforms. The pace of reform is unprecedented. The government has formulated its long-term economic strategy in its Vision 2030, which aims to double the country's gross domestic product by 2030 through a program of economic diversification. This book analyzes how Uzbekistan can boost sustainable economic growth to create more and better jobs. It considers how the country can consolidate achievements from recent policy reforms and maintain reform efforts to accelerate sustainable growth. Policy recommendations cover fostering macroeconomic stability, increasing investment in physical infrastructure, enhancing human capital, improving firms' access to finance, and lowering barriers to international trade and foreign investment inflows.
This paper provides an overview of the major current debates on infrastructure policy. It reviews the evidence on the macroeconomic significance of the sector in terms of growth and poverty alleviation. It also discusses the major institutional debates, including the relative comparative advantage of the public and the private sector in the various stages of infrastructure service delivery as well as the main options for changes in the role of government (i.e. regulation and decentralization).
This report focuses on special economic zones (SEZs) which are widely used across most developing and many developed economies. It explores the place of SEZs in today's global investment landscape and provides guidance for policymakers on how to make SEZs work for sustainable development. It presents international investment trends and prospects at global, regional and national levels, as well as the evolution of international production and global value chains. It analyses the latest developments in new policy measures for investment promotion, facilitation and regulation around the world.
Economic and social progress requires a diverse ecosystem of firms that play complementary roles. Making It Big: Why Developing Countries Need More Large Firms constitutes one of the most up-to-date assessments of how large firms are created in low- and middle-income countries and their role in development. It argues that large firms advance a range of development objectives in ways that other firms do not: large firms are more likely to innovate, export, and offer training and are more likely to adopt international standards of quality, among other contributions. Their particularities are closely associated with productivity advantages and translate into improved outcomes not only for their owners but also for their workers and for smaller enterprises in their value chains. The challenge for economic development, however, is that production does not reach economic scale in low- and middle-income countries. Why are large firms scarcer in developing countries? Drawing on a rare set of data from public and private sources, as well as proprietary data from the International Finance Corporation and case studies, this book shows that large firms are often born large—or with the attributes of largeness. In other words, what is distinct about them is often in place from day one of their operations. To fill the “missing top†? of the firm-size distribution with additional large firms, governments should support the creation of such firms by opening markets to greater competition. In low-income countries, this objective can be achieved through simple policy reorientation, such as breaking oligopolies, removing unnecessary restrictions to international trade and investment, and establishing strong rules to prevent the abuse of market power. Governments should also strive to ensure that private actors have the skills, technology, intelligence, infrastructure, and finance they need to create large ventures. Additionally, they should actively work to spread the benefits from production at scale across the largest possible number of market participants. This book seeks to bring frontier thinking and evidence on the role and origins of large firms to a wide range of readers, including academics, development practitioners and policy makers.
Foreign direct investment (FDI) is a principal means of financing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the corresponding 17 Sustainable Development Goals. FDI's potential contributions to sustainable development in Asia-Pacific can only be realized if the right conditions and policies are in place and if both the quantity and quality of FDI to, from, and within the region increase. This requires not only identifying and prioritizing FDI projects in key sustainable development sectors - such as renewable energy, education, health, water and sanitation, etc. - but also developing and operationalizing FDI policies and legal and regulatory frameworks at national and international levels that maximize the sustainable development potential of FDI in local economies. This publication sets explores the latter point further by focusing on two emerging and important issues related to international investment governance: sustainable development-orientation in international investment agreements (IIA) and the coherence between IIAs and national investment laws in Asia-Pacific. This publication comprises of three chapters. The first chapter sets the scene analyses recent FDI trends, both in terms of flows of inward and outward investment as well as FDI policymaking and international investment governance; the second chapter provides an in depth analysis of the extent to which the bilateral investment treaties of Asia-Pacific least developed countries and landlocked developing countries are oriented towards sustainable development; and, the third and final chapter examines the extent of coherence between the IIA regimes and national frameworks for investment in Thailand and Viet Nam. The chapters in this publication offer promising signs that the momentum for and political will to reform the IIA regime to make it more sustainable development-oriented and coherent are picking up, and ESCAP stands ready to further support its member States in their efforts to achieve both.
