16/03/06

WAIPA New Steering Committee

On 9 March 2006, in the frame of the WAIPA World Investment Conference 2006, the General Assembly elected a new WAIPA Steering Committee for a term of two years. The list of the Steering Committee members is presented as follows: Mr. Kai Hammerich of Invest in Sweden Agency, Sweden, has been reelected as President, Mrs. Ma of the Investment Promotion Agency of Ministry of Commerce, China, and Mrs. Moyo as representative of Trade and Investment of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, have been elected as vice-presidents, Mr. Bahaa-El Din of GAFI, Egypt, has been elected as regional director of the African region, Mr. Trupin of AFII, France, has been elected as regional director of the North Atlantic region, Mr. Rétfalvi of ITDH, Hungary, has been elected as regional director of the Central and Eastern European region, Mr. Tsukamoto of JETRO, Japan, has been elected as regional director of the Asia and Pacific region, Mr. Martinez of the Industrial Development Commission of Mexical, Mexico, has been elected as director regional of the Latin America and Caribbean region, Mr. Hanin of OFI Ltd, Belgium, Mrs. Minja of ICMU, Cameroon, Mrs Camacho of CINDE, Costa Rica, Mrs. Dexter of Tahiti Invest, French Polynesia, Mr. Touray of GIPFZA, Gambia, Mr. Ozols of LDA, Latvia, and Mr. Vitalis of NDC, Saint Lucia are the seven other members of the Steering Committee.

The WAIPA World Investment Conference 2006, 8-9 March 2006, Geneva, Switzerland

The eleventh session of the WAIPA World Investment Conference 2006 which took place in Geneva, Switzerland, on 8-9 March 2006 gathered 256 delegates coming from 85 countries, 64 of whom came from Asia, 48 from Africa, 108 from Europe, 10 from North America, 21 from South America and 5 from Oceania. 53 of the 85 participating IPAs were represented by their chief executives. The meeting also attracted numerous representatives of the private sector, ranging from service providers, business information professionals and media representatives, as well as officials of international and multilateral organizations, NGOs and academia. The conference has received a very good evaluation mark from the majority of the participants who were mostly satisfied with the conference results.

The theme of the conference was What Tomorrow Brings: The rise of New Players and New Forms of FDI. The program included 3 plenary sessions and was preceded by a two day WAIPA – ProInvest workshop held on 6 and 7 March 2006. This workshop was led by OCO Consulting, who shared its experience with the representatives of IPA's from 17 countries.

The welcome address of the opening session was made by Mr. Supachai Panitchpakdi, Secretary-General of UNCTAD, who spoke about FDI and Internationalization of R&D. Professor John Dunning from Reading University in UK and Rutgers University in the USA made afterwards a presentation on New Actors take the stage. The opening session was concluded by a speech of the WAIPA President, Mr. Kai Hammerich, on New Forms and New Methods of FDI.

The 3 sessions were organized in the form of interactive debates. The first one discussed the topic What tomorrow brings: More Competition! More Benefits? and was held jointly with the UNCTAD Commission on Investment, Technology and Related financial issues. It enabled the representatives to discuss the challenges and potential benefits of market globalization. New Actors take the Stage, Growing Importance of Developing Countries in FDI was the theme of the second session, focused on younger firms entering as international players and capital flows between low-income and other developing countries. Finally, the third session on New Forms and New Methods of FDI was devoted to strategic alliances, venture capital, human capital and the transfer of technology, as well as the socio-economic impact of these new methods of FDI. At the end of the first day, the 8th of March, a special interactive session, entitled Meet the consultants, was organized to allow the audience to interact with the consultants from Buck Consultants International, Ernst&Young, IBM Business Consulting Services and OCO Consulting. On Thursday 9 March, the one-hour session devoted to WAIPA's partners and friends enabled them to present the projects, researches, reports and conference presentations of the companies and agencies which they represent. The second part of the day was devoted to specialized workshops.

The IBM-PLI workshop on Why and How should IPAs Benchmark their Locations? helped the participants to understand that the value proposition of the IPA's location is becoming more and more important given the increasing competition for FDI worldwide. The MIGA workshop on Effective Investor Outreach: New Sectors, New Approaches was focused on two case study presentations: Tanzania's successful tourism investor forum and the highly-targeted meeting strategy for manufacturing sector put in place by Croatia. The UNCTAD workshop on Improving Governance in Investment Promotion, Tools and Instruments gave an overview on issues related to improving transparency and efficiency of IPA's operations. And the WAIPA workshop on Best Practices in Promoting New Forms of FDI: Case Studies in the US led by AWS Corporation discussed the best practices in promoting FDI.

The Gala Dinner, held on 8 March at the Mövenpick Hotel, was kindly sponsored by African Access International, whose the mission is to provide a means towards achieving sustainable advancement in the spirit of NEPAD (the New Partnership for Africa's Development ) focusing not only on providing first world products and services, but also on growing the skills of Africa’s human resource base, and facilitating opportunities for broad based wealth creation and economic growth. During the dinner, the ceremony of the WAIPA-MIGA Awards on Meeting Investor Information Needs was held. The awards were given to 5 agencies: Armenian Development Agency (ADA) from Armenia, Proexport Colombia from Colombia, ProNicaragua from Nicaragua, Investment Promotion and Major Works Agency (APIX) from Senegal, and COEGA Development Corporation from South Africa.

On 10 March 2006, the post conference site visit took place in Vacheron Constantin Company, which celebrated its 250th anniversary in 2005. The participants could admire the fabrication process of these famous watches on the guided plant visit. The visit was concluded by the attendance of the Vacheron Constantin shop situated in the heart of Geneva.

New Service for WAIPA members

A new service, exclusively for WAIPA members, is available on the WAIPA website. The presentations given during the WAIPA World Investment Conference 2006 are available in a for members only area. Please contact isa.beatrice.abel@waipa.org for further information.

Do You Want to Host a WAIPA Workshop?

The WAIPA Secretariat is now planning the WAIPA workshop schedule 2006. We would be very grateful if WAIPA members, interested in specific topics of workshops, could send their proposals to the WAIPA Secretariat. Also, WAIPA members who are interested in hosting such workshops during the year 2006 are kindly requested to indicate this to the WAIPA secretariat, at the following e-mail address: karine.campanelli@waipa.org