16/03/07

 

Welcome to the Agency for Promotion Economic and Social Development of the Moroccan Oriental Region!

We are pleased to announce that the Agency for Promotion Economic and Social Development of the Moroccan Oriental Region based in Rabat, Morocco, has become a new member of WAIPA. The Association covers 152 countries worldwide with 212 agencies.

The twelfth session of the WAIPA World Investment Conference held on 8-9 March 2007, in Geneva, Switzerland

The twelfth session of the WAIPA World Investment Conference on The New Sources of FDI: Emerging Economies on the Rise which took place in Geneva, Switzerland, on 8-9 March 2007 gathered more than 280 delegates coming from 77 countries. The meeting attracted numerous representatives of IPAs, but also representatives of the private sector as well as officials of international and multilateral organisations, NGOs and academia. The conference has received a very good evaluation mark from the great majority of the participants who were mostly satisfied with the new format of the conference and the topics discussed during the sessions, namely South-South FDI: the new source of development financing, Globalization and the new protectionism: is there a backlash against FDI in the making? and FDI and natural resources: new players on the scene.

Mr. Driss Jettou, Prime Minister of Morocco, Dr. Supachai Panitchpakdi, Secretary-General of UNCTAD, Mrs. Ma, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Commerce of China and Mr. Victor Chu, Chairman of the First Eastern Investment Group in Hong Kong were the keynote speakers in the opening joint high-level session with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Commission on Investment, Technology and Related Financial Issues.

The six workshops held in parallel on the last afternoon attracted more than 110 participants who benefited from the best expertise in terms of strategic investor targeting, private sector involvement in IPAs, know-how driven location decisions, promotion of trade and development, attracting investment from emerging economies, IPAs as policy advocate, and aftercare.

The Gala Dinner, held on 8 March at the Royal Hotel, in Geneva, was generously sponsored by the Investment Coordinating Board of the Republic of Indonesia. The guests did appreciate very much Indonesian music and dances during the dinner. On this occasion, WAIPA, in collaboration with UNCTAD, equally awarded three member IPAs in recognition of their best practices in aftercare services. The winners are: Invest in Portugal (API), Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) and Tanzania Investment Center (TIC).

On 10 March 2006, the post conference site visit took place in CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, founded in 1954 and one of the Europe's first joint ventures including now 20 Member States. Twenty four participants did discover this world's largest particle physics centre.

A report on the conference as well as workshop presentations will be available soon on www.waipa.org.