scholarly journals Foreign Direct Investment in Pakistan: Policies and Trends

1997 ◽  
Vol 36 (4II) ◽  
pp. 959-985 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashfaque H. Khan

Recent years have seen a sharp change in the attitude of developing countries regarding Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).. The growing balance-of-payments difficulties as well as the decline in concessional ajd. have forced many developing countries to reassess their stances on FOI and to take substantial unilateral steps to Iiberalise their inward POI regimes. In spite of liberalising the inward FOI regime, tempering or removal of obstacles to foreign investors, and according liberal incentives, Pakistan's has been a lacklustre performance in attracting FDI. This paper attempts to find out the reasons why Pakistan has not been able to attract sufficiently large FOI despite liberalisation measures. The analysis identifies a number of factors responsible for low FDI in Pakistan. These include the lack of political stability particularly during the last eight years, and unsatisfactory law and order situation particularly in the. city of Karachi, the largest industrial and commercial centre and the only port of the country. The macroeconomiC imbalances and the slowing down of economic activity tog~ther with inconsistent economic policies have also discouraged foreign investors to increase their participation in Pakistan. The slow bureaucratic process, inappropriate business environment, and inadequate infrastructure facilities have played their role in discouraging foreign . investors to undertake investment initiative in Pakistan. The lack of trained, educated, and disciplined labour force, along with complicated and overprotective labour laws, have inhibited business expansion and frightened away productive investment. The cultural and social taboos as well as the quality of life are not conducive to attracting foreign investors to Pakistan. The lack of welcome to foreign investors by government agencies and officials has also been a problem.

Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11 (109)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Alexey Kuznetsov

The article highlights three stages of the formation of multinationals from developing countries. Although first Argentine TNCs appeared at the turn of the 19th — 20th centuries, in the majority of the Global South countries TNCs appeared in the 1960s — 1980s. With the collapse of the bipolar world order, which in many developing countries was accompanied by significant internal political and economic transformations, the second stage of foreign expansion of TNCs from the Global South began. Indeed, in 1990 they accounted for 6 % of global outward foreign direct investment stock, while the figure was 10 % by the end of 2005. We date the beginning of the third stage to the financial and economic crisis of 2007—2009, since multinationals from developing countries as a whole are more successfully overcoming the period of turbulence in the global economy. By the end of 2020, they accounted for 22 % of global outward foreign direct investment stock, and during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis they generally exported more than 50% of the capital. The modern foreign expansion of such TNCs has many reasons, differs greatly from country to country, and often differs slightly from the specifics of Western multinationals. At the same time, initially, “late internationalization” in developing countries had two main vectors — the use of new opportunities for South — South cooperation and overcoming, through the creation of subsidiaries in highly developed countries, the shortcomings of the business environment of “catching up” countries.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amna Zardoub ◽  
Faouzi Sboui

PurposeGlobalization occupies a central research activity and remains an increasingly controversial phenomenon in economics. This phenomenon corresponds to a subject that can be criticized through its impact on national economies. On the other hand, the world economy is evolving in a liberalized environment in which foreign direct investment plays a fundamental role in the economic development of each country. The advent of financial flows – FDI, remittances and official development assistance – can be a key factor in the development of the economy. The subject of this article is to analyses the effect of financial flows on economic growth in developing countries. Empirically, different approaches have been employed. As part of this work, an attempt was made to use a panel data approach. The results indicate ambiguous effects and confirm the results of previous work.Design/methodology/approachThe authors seek to study the effect of foreign direct investment, remittances and official development assistance (ODA) and some control variables i.e. domestic credit, life expectancy, gross fixed capital formation (GFCF), inflation and three institutional factors on economic growth in developing countries by adopting the panel data methodology. Then, the authors will discuss empirical tests to assess the econometric relevance of the model specification before presenting the analysis of the results and their interpretations that lead to economic policy implications. As part of this work, the authors have rolled panel data for developing countries at an annual frequency during the period from 1990 to 2016. In a first stage of empirical analysis, the authors will carry out a technical study of the heterogeneity test of the individual fixed effects of the countries. This kind of analysis makes it possible to identify the problems retained in the specific choice of econometric modeling to be undertaken in the specificities of the panel data.FindingsThe empirical results validate the hypotheses put forward and indicate the evidence of an ambiguous effect of financial flows on economic growth. The empirical findings from this analysis suggest the use of economic-type solutions to resolve some of the shortcomings encountered in terms of unexpected effects. Governments in these countries should improve the business environment by establishing a framework that further encourages domestic and foreign investment.Originality/valueIn this article, the authors adopt the panel data to study the links between financial flows and economic growth. The authors considered four groups of countries by income.


2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 1955-1978 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weihua Su ◽  
Dongcai Zhang ◽  
Chonghui Zhang ◽  
Josef Abrhám ◽  
Mihaela Simionescu ◽  
...  

Considering the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in the sustainable development of a country, the main aim of this paper is to identify some macroeconomic factors that positively or negatively influence FDI in Visegrad group countries after the European Union (EU) enlargement in 2004. We employed two types of approaches in our analysis: i) time series and ii) panel data approach. According to the generalized ridge regressions estimated in Bayesian framework, the perceived corruption was a factor that influenced FDI in all the countries. In Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia corruption came through as a serious obstacle for FDIs since 2005, but this was not the case for Hungary. Even if Hungary is perceived as a country with high influence, foreign investors seem no to care about this fact and are more interested in the quality of human resources and the possibility to increase exports. Our panel approach based on a panel ARDL model identified a significant relationship between FDI, corruption index and labour force with advanced education however this causality was only detected in the long run. According to the Granger causality in panel, the attraction of FDI inflows succeeded in generating changes in total tax rate, but the issues related to corruption were not reduced at an acceptable level for foreign investors in Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (02) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anshuman Kamila ◽  
Mitali Chinara

Developing countries often consider foreign direct investment (FDI) as an engine to boost economic growth. Therefore they try to promote investment inflow by various means. One approach is to offer investment guarantees to foreign investors using Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs). Following international best practice, India has signed a number of BITs to stimulate inflow of FDI. Till date, the Government of India has signed BITs with 83 countries. These BITs were largely negotiated on the basis of the Indian Model BIT of 1993. There have been recent moves that point in the direction of India fundamentally altering the text of its BITs with countries, including calling off existing BITs and approving a new model BIT. However, concerns have been raised as to the possible pernicious impact of these changes on the inflow of FDI into India. This paper investigates whether the concern is warranted at all – by asking if BITs significantly impact the inflow of FDI. It is established that BIT is indeed a veritable boost to FDI inflow, and the estimated coefficient remains significant and robust across econometric specifications. Therefore, a note of caution is sounded for the rejigging exercise involving BITs that has been initiated by India.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-264
Author(s):  
Herliana Herliana

Investment arbitration has been acclaimed as an important part of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) movement around the globe because it provides a neutral and trustable forum for settling investment dispute. However, many argue that investment arbitration often becomes advocates of foreign investors and neglect the developing country’s interests as the host of investment. This paper aims at studying the investment arbitration awards rendered by International Center for Settlement of Investment Dispute (ICSID) tribunals launched against developing countries. The question is whether and to what extent those awards have equally observed the interests of foreign investors and host states of investments. To answer the questions, this paper employs case study method and use publicly available ICSID cases. This research shows that some ICSID tribunals have inconsistent reasoning which led to contradictory decisions. Apparently, as some cases indicate ICSID tribunals gave more weight to the need to protect foreign investors rather than host countries’ development interests. As a consequence, inconsistency and ambiguity have led to uncertainty and unpredictability of the forum. This is not only disadvantaged the parties due to inability to foresee the likely outcome of the disputes but also endanger the ICSID tribunals’ credibility as neutral and reliable forum.


2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lateef Ademola Olatunji ◽  
Muhammad Sadiq Shahid

<p>Although it may seem natural to argue that foreign direct investment (FDI) can convey great advantages to host countries. This paper finds that FDI flows to Sub-Saharan Africa economies unaffected by conflict and political instability exceed those with crisis. For FDI to strive in these countries, it must introduce sound economic policies and make the country investor friendly. There must be political stability, sound economic management and well developed infrastructure.</p>


Asian Survey ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 46 (6) ◽  
pp. 881-897 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eun Mee Kim ◽  
Jai S. Mah

South Korea's growth as an outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) player is an example of developing countries becoming major foreign investors. China has become the largest destination for Korean OFDI, which appears to complement Seoul's exports to China.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 1390-1404
Author(s):  
R.I. Vasilyeva ◽  
◽  
O.S. Mariev ◽  

Stable political environment and prominent development of political institutions increase foreign direct investment flows by providing lower risks for investors. However, this impact can vary according to the development of the country. This study aims to investigate the impact of various indicators of political stability on foreign direct investment attraction for different economies distinguished by their development level. Our database includes 66 FDI-recipient countries and 98 FDI-investing countries for the period from 2001 to 2018. By applying the gravity approach and Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood method with instrumental variables (IV PPML), we model bilateral FDI flows, incorporating variables reflecting various aspects of political stability formed by the principal components analysis. Interestingly, we found mixed results regarding the impact of political stability on FDI flows. In particular, political stability indicators were found to be insignificant, when analysing the bilateral FDI flows for the group of developed economies. We obtained similar result for the group of developing economies. However, political stability variables significantly influence FDI flows for countries with different development level, confirming the hypothesis that countries’ development affects bilateral FDI flows. Besides, we discover the significant difference between developed and developing countries referring to FDI-investors. Based on the obtained results, we highlight a few policy implications for developing and developed economies.


Author(s):  
Sotonye Frank

Stabilisation clauses are widely portrayed as an essential tool which developing countries use to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) to their extractive industries. However, this view of stabilisation clauses is based on two presumptions. The first is that developing countries compete to attract FDI. The second is that developing countries have higher levels of political risks. This article argues that neither presumption is true as such. The available evidence points to intense competition among foreign investors, backed by their home governments, for access to the extractive industries in developing countries. The political risks that stabilisation clauses are aimed at also exist at least in equal measure, in developed countries. The article then relies on the findings of previous empirical studies and an analysis of current trends in stabilisation practices to argue that contrary to popular belief, stabilisation clauses do not play an ‘essential’ role in attracting FDI into developing countries.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document