Publication:
Planning for Success: Strategies of Investment Promotion Agencies

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Files in English
English PDF (6.38 MB)
636 downloads
English Text (227.24 KB)
39 downloads
Date
2023-04-07
ISSN
Published
2023-04-07
Editor(s)
Abstract
Governments establish investment promotion agencies (IPAs) as part of the larger framework fostering private sector development and contributing to achieving national development objectives. IPAs do this by attracting and supporting investments that will translate into more and better jobs; higher wages; more revenue for local businesses; and the skills, technologies, and new economic activities which will, in turn, lead again to more jobs, wages, and local revenue. In order to do this, the IPA must identify its own strategic objectives and chart a path towards the achievement of these objectives. Cascading from national strategies and plans, the IPA’s strategy is a key tool that helps it succeed by guiding it to focus on the investors most likely to invest and generate the desired impacts, engage in the most suitable activities to cater to investors along the investment lifecycle, and make the best use of its resources, capabilities, and partnerships. This note serves as a guide to IPAs and policy makers in the development, adoption, and implementation of IPA strategies, drawing on World Bank Group experience and examples of good practices around the world. It presents the essential elements of an investment promotion strategy and the critical steps for its development and implementation.
Link to Data Set
Citation
Sawaqed , Lina; Griffin, Carlos. 2023. Planning for Success: Strategies of Investment Promotion Agencies . Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions Insight - Trade, Investment and Competitiveness. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/39644 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.
Associated URLs
Associated content
Report Series
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

  • Publication
    Investment Promotion Agency Advocacy for Investment Climate Reform
    (Washington, DC, 2022) Griffin, Carlos; Rogatschnig, Zenia A.
    Investment promotion agencies (IPAs) use advocacy services to help their countries improve the quantity and quality of FDI they can attract, retain, and grow in the future. Successful IPA advocacy persuades governments to use targeted public reforms, expenditures, services, and convening power to attract, retain, and expand FDI in greater quantities and with higher positive development impact. This instructive note aims to present IPAs and their governments with insights on conducting advocacy effectively by providing an overview of key principles for advocacy and defining the systematic process involved in IPA advocacy services, which includes issue identification, solution formulation, and advocating for reform adoption and implementation. This note also provides four illustrative case studies of IPAs that successfully advocated for key investment climate enhancing reforms utilizing this systematic process, leveraging information collected from among the winners and other distinguished entrants of the 2021 Awards for Strengthening IPA Advocacy Services, jointly held by the WBG and the World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies (WAIPA).
  • Publication
    Investment Promotion Essentials : What Sets the World’s Best Investment Facilitators Apart From the Rest
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-09) Ortega, Celia; Griffin, Carlos
    More than 70 percent of investment promotion intermediaries may be missing out on foreign investment by failing to provide investors with accurate and timely information, according to the global investment promotion benchmarking 2009 report. This function, known as 'investment facilitation,' is one of the simplest and most cost effective, yet it is neglected at many agencies. A new survey by the investment climate advisory services of the World Bank Group has identified 14 common practices of the top-performing agencies in the benchmarking study. Weaker performers can inexpensively implement many of these practices to win a larger share of the trillion-dollar market for foreign investment.
  • Publication
    Promoting Foreign Investment in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Situations
    (World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-04) Whyte, Robert; Griffin, Carlos
    Fragile and conflict-affected situations might appear incapable of attracting significant flows of foreign investment due to their often negative international images and weak enabling environments. However, during the last eight years, foreign investment into these economies has grown almost three times more quickly than flows into the rest of the world, albeit from a very low starting point. Untapped natural resources, reconstruction needs, and severely underserved consumer demand present domestic and foreign investors with significant opportunities, many of which continue to go unrealized. This note provides guidance to investment policymakers and promoters in fragile and conflict-affected situations, whose work is needed to bring those opportunities to fruition.
  • Publication
    The Effectiveness of Promotion Agencies at Attracting Foreign Direct Investment
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2004) Morisset, Jacques; Andrews-Johnson, Kelly
    A perplexing question has become increasingly important: Does investment promotion really work? The authors hereby made a major step in providing a convincing answer to this question. Because many countries were not yet trying to promote investment, the authors could conduct a very simple test: compare foreign direct investment (FDI) flows into countries that had promotion activities in the United States, with the flows into countries that didn't. The study provided some crude support for the idea that promotion worked and, with some assumptions, the costs of attracting an investor, or its trade-off seemed to favor promotion. But more recent data from this survey provided the authors a more sophisticated methodology; as a result, their study is more convincing, and addresses many more questions than earlier work. They find the median expenditure on investment by developing countries to be smaller than expected. However, the study shows that expenditures below a certain annual level yield few, if any returns. Where the investment climate is bad, efforts to improve policy seem sensible; but in fact, in countries with very poor investment climates, returns to expenditures on other promotion activities are likely to be especially low. Similarly, it is likely that promotion has more impact on certain kinds of investors than on others. The research stipulates important factors about organizational issues, and, results show that agencies with some kind of participation from the private sector, do better than those that are purely governmental. It also provides evidence to suggest that, at least for many countries, a dollar spent on investment promotion yields a better return than a dollar provided as a subsidy or given up through a tax incentive program.
  • Publication
    Developing Economies and International Investors : Do Investment Promotion Agencies Bring them Together?
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-08) Harding, Torfinn; Javorcik, Beata Smarzynska
    Many countries spend significant resources on investment promotion agencies in the hope of attracting inflows of foreign direct investment. Despite the importance of this question for public policy choices, little is known about the effectiveness of investment promotion efforts. This study uses newly collected data on national investment promotion agencies in 109 countries to examine the effects of investment promotion on foreign direct investment inflows. The empirical analysis follows two approaches. First, it tests whether sectors explicitly targeted by investment promotion agencies receive more foreign direct investment in the post-targeting period relative to the pre-targeting period and non-targeted sectors. Second, it examines whether the existence of an investment promotion agency is correlated with higher foreign direct investment inflows. Results from both approaches point to the same conclusion. Investment promotion efforts appear to increase foreign direct investment inflows to developing countries. Moreover, agency characteristics, such as the agency's legal status and reporting structure, affect the effectiveness of investment promotion. There is also evidence of diversion of foreign direct investment due to investment incentives offered by other countries in the same geographic region.

Users also downloaded

Showing related downloaded files

  • Publication
    The Mexican Social Protection System in Health
    (World Bank, Washington DC, 2013-01) Bonilla-Chacín, M.E.; Aguilera, Nelly
    With a population of 113 million and a per-capita Gross Domestic Product, or GDP of US$10,064 (current U.S. dollars), Mexico is one of the largest and highest-income countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The country has benefited from sustained economic growth during the last decade, which was temporarily interrupted by the financial and economic crisis. Real GDP is projected to grow 3.8 percent and 3.6 percent in 2012 and 2013, respectively (International Monetary Fund, or IMF 2012). Despite this growth, poverty in the country remains high; with half of the population living below the national poverty line. The country is also highly heterogeneous, with large socioeconomic differences across states and across urban and rural areas. In 2010, while the extreme poverty ratio in the Federal District and the states of Colima and Nuevo Leon was below 3 percent, in Chiapas, Guerrero, and Oaxaca it was 25 percent or higher. These large regional differences are also found in other indicators of well-being, such as years of schooling, housing conditions, and access to social services. This case study assesses key features and achievements of the Social Protection System in Health (Sistema de Proteccion Social en Salud) in Mexico, and particularly of its main pillar, Popular Health Insurance (Seguro Popular, PHI). It analyzes the contribution of this policy to the establishment and implementation of universal health coverage in Mexico. In 2003, with the reform of the General Health Law, the PHI was institutionalized as a subsidized health insurance scheme open to the population not covered by the social security schemes. Today, the PHI covers all of its intended affiliates, about 52 million people
  • Publication
    World Development Report 1994
    (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994) World Bank
    World Development Report 1994, the seventeenth in this annual series, examines the link between infrastructure and development and explores ways in which developing countries can improve both the provision and the quality of infrastructure services. In recent decades, developing countries have made substantial investments in infrastructure, achieving dramatic gains for households and producers by expanding their access to services such as safe water, sanitation, electric power, telecommunications, and transport. Even more infrastructure investment and expansion are needed in order to extend the reach of services - especially to people living in rural areas and to the poor. But as this report shows, the quantity of investment cannot be the exclusive focus of policy. Improving the quality of infrastructure service also is vital. Both quantity and quality improvements are essential to modernize and diversify production, help countries compete internationally, and accommodate rapid urbanization. The report identifies the basic cause of poor past performance as inadequate institutional incentives for improving the provision of infrastructure. To promote more efficient and responsive service delivery, incentives need to be changed through commercial management, competition, and user involvement. Several trends are helping to improve the performance of infrastructure. First, innovation in technology and in the regulatory management of markets makes more diversity possible in the supply of services. Second, an evaluation of the role of government is leading to a shift from direct government provision of services to increasing private sector provision and recent experience in many countries with public-private partnerships is highlighting new ways to increase efficiency and expand services. Third, increased concern about social and environmental sustainability has heightened public interest in infrastructure design and performance. This report includes the World Development Indicators, which offer selected social and economic statistics for 132 countries.
  • Publication
    At Your Service?: The Promise of Services-led Growth in Uzbekistan
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-07) World Bank
    In Uzbekistan, the services sector accounts for more than half of all jobs and has been central to the process of structural transformation over the past three decades. In the past decade, the growth of Uzbekistan’s services exports has lagged behind its manufactures' exports while FDI greenfield announcements to both sectors have been even. The growth of the services sector in the past five years was driven by social services, mostly reflecting increased public spending. This report groups the services sector into four categories based on their skill intensity, the extent of their linkages with other sectors, and their tradability in international markets: low-skilled consumer services, low-skilled enabling services , global innovator services. Of these groups, social services accounted for three-fourths of employment growth in the services sector between 2017–2022. These services also experienced relatively high rates of labor productivity growth, which was largely driven by higher public spending on wages and salaries.
  • Publication
    Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21) Luna-Bazaldua, Diego; Levin, Victoria; Liberman, Julia; Gala, Priyal Mukesh
    This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.
  • Publication
    World Development Report 1987
    (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987) World Bank
    This report, consisting of two parts, is the tenth in the annual series assessing development issues. Part I reviews recent trends in the world economy and their implications for the future prospects of developing countries. It stresses that better economic performance is possible in both industrial and developing countries, provided the commitment to economic policy reforms is maintained and reinforced. In regard to the external debt issues, the report argues for strengthened cooperation among industrial countries in the sphere of macroeconomic policy to promote smooth adjustment to the imbalances caused by external payments (in developing countries). Part II reviews and evaluates the varied experience with government policies in support of industrialization. Emphasis is placed on policies which affect both the efficiency and sustainability of industrial transformation, especially in the sphere of foreign trade. The report finds that developing countries which followed policies that promoted the integration of their industrial sector into the international economy through trade have fared better than those which insulated themselves from international competition.