AIM 2022 Hosts WAIPA’s Workshop on Attracting Quality Investment
FDI matters. Yet, “Quality FDI” is paramount!
This is the gist of the wealth of experience that the Annual Investment Meeting has gained over more than a decade of endeavoring to bring investors, investment promotion agencies (IPAs), high-profile government officials, startups, SMEs, private asset owners, and project promoters from all around the world under one roof to discuss the ways of rebuilding the global investment structure to achieve sustainable economic growth for every country and a higher living standard for every individual on our planet.
Building upon this decade-long effort, AIM 2022, in cooperation with the World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies (WAIPA), will be passing on this long, hands-on experience to the participants of the international investment event that will take place from 29 to 31 March 2022 at the Dubai Exhibition Center, EXPO 2020, under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, Ruler of Dubai.
That said, before saying anything about what AIM and WAIPA will be doing to provide real value to AIM participants, it is important to start by glancing at WAIPA.
What is WAIPA?
The World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies (WAIPA) was stablished as a non-governmental organization under Swiss law in 1995, and since day one, WAIPA has represented an ever-growing number of member agencies. Through its wide range of activities, WAIPA provides investment promotion agencies (IPAs) with an opportunity to network and exchange best practices in investment promotion. WAIPA has always dedicated - and continues to dedicate – a lot of time and effort towards building the human resources capacity of its member agencies. Training events have been organized by WAIPA alone or in coordination with partner organizations (like AIM in our case).
Now that the key objective of WAIPA is to “promote any country, political sub-division of a country or other uncontested territory, as a destination for, or as a source of investments”, it’s high time to shed light upon the important workshop that WAIPA will be organizing, within the framework of AIM Pre-conference Workshops, a few days before AIM kicks off. Well, let’s diver deeper.
Why Should AIM Participants Attend WAIPA’s Workshop?
Let’s put the question differently. What added value the WAIPA workshop will provide to AIM participants, who include investment promotion professionals, regardless of their level of seniority, geographic origin and the type of organization they represent (whether these organizations are national, regional or local IPAs, free zones, special economic zones, government ministries, chambers of commerce and all other organizations that are involved in investment promotion and attraction)?
As part of the FDI Excellence training series that WAIPA and FDI Center have been providing over the past 4 years, the Annual Investment Meeting is hosting this important workshop to discuss the vital topic of “Attracting Quality Investment”.
Overall, the workshop intends to provide AIM Participants with the essential knowledge and skills for identifying and attracting high-value investment projects and maximizing the benefits of FDI for their economies.
The workshop, which will take place on March 26th, 2022, will cover a broad range of important topics, that include: the definition of “quality FDI”, how an IPA can define what type of FDI is best for its location, how IPAs can identify the companies that have the potential for making quality investments, the criteria that can be used to determine whether a potential project is “high-value”, the types of support that IPAs need to provide to attract higher-quality FDI, how a location’s innovation ecosystem contributes to attracting quality FDI, how IPAs can measure the impact of attracting FDI beyond employment and capital inflows, and, last but not least, what IPAs can do to increase the benefits of investors once they have settled in the location.
The speakers and presenters at the workshop will include senior representatives of some of the world’s best investment promotion agencies and leading FDI experts who will share their experience and methods with workshop participants. An amazing opportunity?
Please contact andreas.hora@waipa.org to register or for more information
