15/12/05
Welcome to new WAIPA member from the Republic of Korea!
We are pleased to announce that the Invest Promotion Division of the Gyeonggi Provincial Government, Republic of Korea has become the 183rd member of the World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies. The Association covers now 148 countries worldwide.
Do You Want to Host a WAIPA Workshop?
WAIPA is currently planning its workshop schedule for the following year. The topics of the workshops are determined through feed-back from WAIPA members. We are looking forward to receiving your proposals. 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: info@waipa.org
WAIPA Regional Workshop on "A cluster based approach to attracting FDI",
5-8 December 2005, Marseille, France
From 5 to 8 December 2005 a Regional Workshop on "A Cluster Based Approach to Attracting FDI" was held in Marseille, France.
This workshop was jointly organized by WAIPA, UNCTAD and ANIMA (a European-funded project that works with IPAs across the MEDA - Mediterranean and North African - countries).
The latter programme also acted as a host for the event. The major part of training modules were prepared and delivered by OCO Consulting Ltd under its collaborative arrangements with WAIPA.
This workshop followed the successful collaboration of last year between ANIMA, UNCTAD and WAIPA, which tackled the subject of “Strategic Marketing”. This year, the seminar explored in depth the business development concept known as “clusters” and its application in the promotion and generation of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Training on the issue of cluster development and its interrelationship with FDI was accompanied by site visits and case study presentations facilitated by Provence Promotion, SAEM Sophia Antipolis and Paris Développement.
All together, 16 officials from WAIPA members in 12 countries participated in the workshop. These included: Algeria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Egypt, French Polynesia, Israel, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Poland, Syria and Tunisia.
The major objective of the workshop was to help investment promotion practitioners to understand the changing nature of FDI and in particular the shift towards skills and technology seeking projects rather than pure cost or incentive driven investment. In this context participants were introduced to analytical tools for IPAs to identify and develop a cluster-based approach to investment promotion. In addition to discussion of theoretical aspects of cluster development and FDI, the workshop also involved practical exercises for the participants helping them to define and develop their cluster-based promotional approaches and identify the most promising potential target markets and companies. Participants were given full access to Locomonitor, OCO Consulting’s FDI tracking and analysis tool to allow them to validate their target market assumptions and propositions on real data and company profiles.
Case study materials delivered by guest speakers, as well as on-site visits to clusters in and around the Marseille region enriched participants' knowledge of the subject of cluster development. According to participants' evaluation the workshop has fully met their expectations.
The WAIPA World Investment Conference 2006, 8-9 March 2006, Geneva, Switzerland
The eleventh session of the WAIPA World Investment Conference 2006 will take place in Geneva, Switzerland, on 8-9 March 2006. The theme of the conference will be: "What Tomorrow Brings: The rise of New Players and New Forms of FDI". The official opening session will start at 10 o'clock, on the 8th of March 2006. Workshops will follow the conference on the 9th of March afternoon. Further information will be provided in the next WAIPA Mailing. We are looking forward to seeing you at the conference!
UNCTAD Report on the Evaluation of the Investment Promotion Capacity of the Algerian Investment Promotion Agency (ANDI)
The French report, entitled " Evaluation des capacités de promotion des investissements de l'ANDI" , which was commissioned as a follow-up to Algeria's Investment Policy Review, assesses the capacities of the national investment promotion agency (ANDI) and suggests how it can become more proactive and more effective in attracting investment. To this end, it makes a series of recommendations covering issues of status, structure, personnel and training. It builds existing projects including a training programme in investment promotion, an Investment Compass for Algeria and the creation of an investor tracking system.
The report is available on: www.unctad.org/ipr
For further information, please contact: riad.meddeb@unctad.org |
