Multi-year expert meeting on investment for development (second session)

At its forty-fourth executive session, the Trade and Development Board agreed that the Investment, Enterprise and Development Commission should convoke a multi-year expert meeting on investment for development.

The fifty-fifth session of the Trade and Development Board approved the terms of reference for the second session, as follows:

"The expert meeting will analyse the development impact of both domestic investment activities and, in particular, foreign direct investment, including the interaction between the two. It will also analyse public-private partnerships. The impact of these activities on productive capacities in the food and agricultural sector, among others, may also be analysed"    (TD/B/55/9, 1 October 2008)

The purpose of this meeting is to bring together experts, government policymakers, and representatives of transnational corporations, civil society and academia to address the development implications of investments, combining both foreign and domestic sources, and designing and preparing effective and active policies to boost the productive capacities and international competitiveness of developing and transition economies.

The meeting will examine three different case studies - infrastructure, agriculture (including food production) and climate change - and "discuss how policies can help ensure that the direct and indirect effects of both foreign and domestic investment" (TD/B/55/9, page 9) bring development gains, with due respect given to public-private initiatives.

At the outset of the meeting, participants will also examine how these two forms of investment - domestic and foreign - have evolved in the past two to three decades, and what the optimum level of investment would be to ensure that there are no crowding-out effects between the two investments and that synergies between them will be enhanced.