"Public investment and development"
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 Board approved the terms of reference for the third session as follows:
| "The expert meeting will examine the partnership between public and private investment in areas of particular importance for development. It will, among other things, consider how policies at the national, regional and international level can enhance synergies from public-private partnerships. In this context, the meeting will offer an opportunity to explore different country experiences" |
| (TD/B/55/9, 1 October 2008) |
The purpose of this meeting is to bring together experts, government policymakers and representatives from transnational corporations, as well as civil society and academia, to address the development implications of public investments in promoting pro-poor growth and sustainable development, boosting countries´ competitiveness, generating employments and reducing social and income disparities.
As investment levels are low in most developing countries, particularly in least developed countries (LDCs) caught in a poverty trap, there is a need to increase public investment not only to meet certain critical needs but also to trigger a rise in private (foreign and domestic) investment, which is lacking due to poor infrastructure, ineffective services delivery and insufficient availability of skilled labour.
In that context, the meeting will examine how policies at the national, regional and international level can boost public-private partnerships in key industries for the purpose of, among others, promoting infrastructure development, mitigating climate change and increasing agriculture production. Investment will be examined upon by ownership, mainly domestic and foreign, and for the former, a further breakdown is made between the private and public investment.
The expert meeting is expected, as part of the Multi-Year Expert Meeting on Investment for Development", to contribute to the achievement of a "practical/actionable" outcome (as identified in paragraph 207 of the Accra Accord), including through the last of the four sessions of this multi-year expert meeting that is charged with "pull[ing] together the findings of the three previous meetings".
Inputs from experts Experts nominated by member States are encouraged to submit brief papers (up to five pages in length) as contributions to the work of the meeting. The papers should draw on experts’ relevant experience of the national public sector and of public–private partnerships, and should be submitted to the UNCTAD secretariat in advance of the meeting. The papers will be made available at the meeting in the form and language in which they are received. Experts are requested to submit papers by 25 January 2011. Papers should be forwarded to: Mr. Masataka Fujita F.: +41 22 917 0122 |
