A response by the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment to the OECD Public Consultation on Investment Treaties and Climate Change. The Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI) — a joint research center of Columbia Law School and the Earth Institute at Columbia University — explores elements of the international investment legal framework, including the impact of investment treaties, investor–state dispute settlement, and home and host government policies governing inward and outward investment, among many other issues.
This paper focuses on the levels of foreign direct investments coming to Georgia. The main areas addressed by this study include: how to create a favorable investment climate in Georgia and on the possible means of encouragement of FDI inflows in the Georgian economy. This paper aims to fill the knowledge gap in the area of foreign direct investment (FDI) research in Georgia. Various dimensions of FDI were analyzed from a comparative perspective drawing on the case studies of investors in Georgia. The analysis first focused on major obstacles that investors face while performing. Then, attractive features of business climate of Georgia were investigated. Finally, performance issues confronting FDI firms were analyzed. The study results indicated that reasons to invest in Georgia are geopolitical situation and having empty market, and incentives to improve the investment climate of Georgia were State guaranties, tax holidays, political stability, development of infrastructure and advertisement. Another result of the study was that Georgian Government does everything to have free market conditions and do not intervene to the economy. Although the issue of safety affects foreign investors, it does not act as a major deterrent of FDI inflows. The most serious problem influencing the performance of FDI firms were found to be not enough skilled and educated local labor force, economic and political uncertainty. In general, however, it was found that foreign investors have been satisfied with their performance largely due to the relatively smooth competition and the availability of several market niches in country market.
ABSTRACTThe climate crisis and the credit crisis have made the political issues surrounding investment and finance more critical than ever before. Proposals for 'Green New Deals' and the like — aimed at tackling both global warming and global recession — are streaming forth worldwide. Yet many such proposals are incoherent in that they overlook the need for an immediate start to a programme of phasing out both fossil fuels and purported fossil fuel substitutes such as nuclear power and industrial‐scale agrofuels. They also tend to rely on Northern‐biased conceptions of technology transfer and intellectual property that the climate crisis has helped make obsolete. To overcome these problems, future climate movements will have to focus increasingly on the democratization of research, planning and finance.
Just energy transition is key to South Africa's inclusive and sustainable growth. It is necessary to unlock large pools of private capital and attract foreign investment to drive low-carbon transition. Despite downside risks, South Africa has strong macroeconomic fundamentals and commitment to improving the overall investment climate. Climate change poses considerable systematic risks, thus needs to be urgently integrated into macroeconomic policy and planning. Harness transition opportunity invest in resilient infrastructure and create market for low-carbon technologies to boost growth and strengthen the macro investment climate. Implement carbon tax effectively and raise policy ambition, supported by a fiscal framework conducive for climate investments, as well as invest tax revenues to support just transition. The current energy crisis presents an opportunity for sector reform, regulatory changes, and use of innovative financial solutions to promote low-carbon private sector investments. The World Bank has developed this discussion paper in response to the government of South Africa's request to analyze ways in which private capital flows can be catalyzed and leveraged for low-carbon investments. The focus of this paper is on electricity generation sector and the industry sector.
This study tries to present the current picture of investment climate of Georgia. This work, we believe, will also fill the knowledge gap in the area of foreign direct investment (FDI) research on Georgia. The analysis focuses on major obstacles faced by investors. We first identify and then quantify the major obstacles for both foreign and domestic investors using the case studies of investors in Georgia and the statistics obtained from these data. The study results indicates that the most serious problem for investors is the human factor, which comprises of corruption and unskilled local labor force. We also found that the issues such as government regulations (regulatory burden), infrastructure, or safety do not act as major deterrents of FDI inflows, especially after the successful reforms of the Saakashvili government. It was also found that most investors have been satisfied with their operation.
Government policies and behavior exert a strong influence on the investment climate through their impact on costs, risks and barriers to competition. Key factors affecting the investment climate through their impact on costs are: corruption, taxes, the regulatory burden and extent of red tape in general, factor markets (labor, intermediate materials and capital), the quality of infrastructure, technological and innovation support, and the availability and cost of finance. While the investment climate surveys are quite useful in identifying major issues and bottlenecks as perceived by firms, the data collected is also meant to provide the basic information for an econometric assessment of the impact or contribution of the investment climate (IC) variables on productivity. We believe that improving the investment climate (IC) is a key policy instrument to promote economic growth and to mitigate the institutional, legal, economic and social factors that are constraining the convergence of per capita income and labor productivity of Turkey relative to more developed countries. For that, we need to identify the main investment climate variables that affect economic performance measures like total factor productivity, employment, wages, exports and foreign direct investment and this is the main goal of this paper. In turn, that quantified impact is used in the advocacy for, and design of, investment-climate reforms.
This study aimed to characterize the real estate investment portfolio and describe the real estate investment climate in Batangas province particularly the residential real estate property. The researcher used descriptive research design to attain its objective. Questionnaire is the primary instrument used to gather pertinent data from the 391 residential real estate investors from different subdivisions and condominium projects within Batangas province. The researcher used stratified proportional random sampling to determine the qualified respondents of the study In order to analyze the data gathered frequency percentage mean and One way Analysis of Variance were utilized. Findings revealed that the common real estate investment portfolio in Batangas province are single detached properties funded through their salary paid through instalment basis and owned the property for 6 to 10 years. The status of real estate investment climate is favorable in terms of socio-cultural technological economic ecological and political aspects. There is significant difference on the assessment of the respondents to socio-cultural aspect when grouped according to source of fund to buy the property and years of ownership technological aspect when grouped according to source of fund to buy the property economic aspect when respondents are grouped according to source of fund and financial option to buy the property ecological aspect when respondents are grouped according to financial option to buy the property political aspect when respondents are grouped according to real estate property purchased and source of fund to buy the property.
This report on Sudan's Investment Climate Assessment (ICA) provides a baseline assessment of challenges to productivity, diversification and inclusion. Chapter 1 describes some of the questions underlying the three issues of competitiveness, diversification and broad-based growth. Chapter 2 analyzes firm performance and competitiveness. Chapter 3 discusses markets and trust. Chapter 4 describes the role of the financial sector. Chapter 5 analyses the informal sector. Chapter 6 discusses the conflict-affected private sector development. Chapter 7 discusses regional inclusion, and Chapter 8 makes some preliminary conclusions and recommendations.
Development economists have enjoined Africans to leverage on remittance as their main source of investment financing due to its constant and undisrupted inflows despite structural distortions and economic weaknesses compared to other sources of financial flows in recent time. This ignited the motivation for this study, to unveil the nexus between migrant's remittance and investment financing and the modulating effect of the investment climate in this relation on a panel of 28 sub-Saharan African countries over the period 1995 to 2017. Using the panel autoregression distributive lagged estimation technique, the following empirical findings were established. First, the theoretical supposition underpinning the assumption in investment climate as a factor that motivates migrant's remittance inflow to be channelled to investment received a clear empirical support. Second, it was established that the interaction between remittance and components of investment climate (government size and open market) enhanced the growth of private investment. Last, remittance is found to exert a positive effect on private investment in as much as the former does not exceed the threshold of 78%, above which private investment would decline off the quadratic curve. The study suggests the policy-makers channel deliberate efforts at improving not only the efficiency of the market, but government participation especially in the area of tax policy and fiscal financing.
