The Expert Meeting will identify successful policies and approaches to building productive capacity and international competitiveness in developing countries. These include polices aiming to:
- attract foreign direct investment (FDI),
- support technology transfer,
- enhance enterprise development and
- maximize the benefits of FDI.
The Meeting will review the principal supply side constraints facing local firms in developing countries and the impact they have had on exports and FDI.
Ongoing reforms in developing countries have not always yielded expected benefits in terms of successful integration into the global economy. Enterprises in many developing countries are often unable to respond to emerging opportunities. It is now widely recognized that benefiting from globalization requires a complementary set of capacity-building policies to address the supply-side constraints faced by local firms. Overcoming such constraints involves sustained development efforts and enhanced official development assistance (ODA). At the same time, FDI can contribute to productive capacity development when combined with policies promoting productive investment, technology transfer, enterprise development and the consolidation of productive chains.
The need to enhance linkages between overseas development assistance (ODA) and FDI is important, and the Meeting will consider ways in which assistance can help build capacity in developing countries, particularly in the promotion of entrepreneurship, and increase enterprise competitiveness through technology and business linkages.
The Meeting will also emphasize the need for integrated treatment of policy areas and policy coherence, based on UNCTAD´s experience in investment policy reviews, the "Invest in Peace" initiative and other related investment and enterprise competitiveness policy advice, thus, contributing to the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals. In this regard, the Meeting will bring together donor institutions and country recipients of technical assistance for building productive capacity.
