Finance and Pensions & Investments Blog

According to World Investment Report 2010 Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) produced by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), the developing and transition economies attracted half of global inflows of FDI and invested a quarter of global imports. Among the biggest investors in 2009 is China, which climbed to second place after the U.S..

The report, presented today by Victoria Aranda, an adviser to United Nations Transnational Investment and Development in the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade (MITT) provides that the global FDI inflows exceed $ 1.2 trillion in 2010, and then continue rising to 1.3 to 1.5 billion in 2011 and reach 1.6 to 2 billion dollars in 2012.

However, the trend of FDI varies across regions. The report predicts that most regions rebound in FDI flows in 2010. In this regard, Africa has an emergence of new sources of investment and industrial progress in Asia through FDI is spreading also to other countries and industries.

Half of the six main countries of destination of FDI flows are now developing and transition countries as China, Russia or Brazil. Still, more than two-thirds of mergers and acquisitions are still taking place in developed countries.

“As regards the origin of investment, Hong Kong (China), China and the Russian Federation, in that order, are among the top 20 investors in the world,” said Aranda.

In the case of Spain, has been dropped as a recipient of both investment and imports of investment. Ranked No. 20 in FDI inflows and the post 17 in outward FDI.

Continued internationalization of enterprises

Despite the crisis, the internationalization of production companies has not stopped. The share of foreign affiliates in the gross domestic product (GDP) reached a high of 11% in 2009 and the number of employees of such subsidiaries increased slightly to 80 million. Developing economies in transition account for most of this workforce.

Assets of foreign affiliates increased by 7.5% in 2009, mainly due to increase of 15% in IEDE entries that were worth 18 billion dollars.

Clean and sustainable economic growth

The current edition of the report, which marks its twentieth anniversary, a special section dedicated to investment in low carbon economies.

The study estimates that FDI in low-carbon “has reached a considerable level” and in 2009 rose to 90 billion dollars just in the three main sectors such as electricity generation from renewable or alternative sources, recycling manufacturing and environmental technology.

“You can say that multinational companies are both part of the problem and part of the solution to the environmental challenge. There is enormous potential for the expansion of investment in products, processes and clean technologies, “he said Aranda.

The European Union has gone to see an economic bonanza in China as a threat and adopt a protectionist position, as derived from the doctoral thesis of Maiza Andoni, an economist at the University of the Basque Country (UPV / EHU) has analyzed the political public adopted by the EU since 1978. The work raises a number of forecasts and recommendations for the future.

The thesis defines the strategy of the EU to China as “reactive and short-term” because of the lack of vision to its rapid economic expansion. When you lay the foundations for this expansion in the 80s, the EU is in the process of internal consolidation. Maiza explains that because this incident occurred a delayed reaction, “so early in the decade of the 90 European companies have a smaller presence in China than other powers.”

It is only then begin to implement mechanisms for cooperation, not responding to a predetermined, although it has consolidated the role of EU leadership in China during the last years of the 9’0 and early new millennium.

However, the EU has taken over the last five years a more protectionist against China. As explained in the research, European countries, especially those of greater technological (Germany, France, UK, Sweden and Finland), understand that China has benefited more from the EU than vice versa.

This is due to the slow pace of political and economic reforms expected by the EU and other world powers in China. Now “European countries face difficulties in accessing the Chinese market and insufficient protection of intellectual property rights, which means that Chinese producers are profiting from European technologies for controlled world markets,” the job.

A lack of security or increased competition?

Maiza considers that the EU’s protectionist policy with China is justified to problems such as dumping, lack of safe toys and drugs or counterfeiting. However, the economist asks whether this approach attempts to conceal some structural deficit of the European economy in managing the increased competition in the new international economic stage.

The thesis provides a greater rivalry between China and the EU in strategic sectors, and a possible greater role of protectionist policies. Maiza is recommended that the EU poses a strategy away from confrontational politics, which is the U.S. attitude to making the Asian giant. Due to internal problems that the proposed reforms could bring to China, the author of the thesis warns that his government will act slowly.

“The European public policy must focus on a few priority issues to demand and make a joint approach with countries that are not listed as threatened by China,” says the expert. It stresses the need for a common strategy across the EU, far from the practices carried out so far, in which some of the major European powers have acted unilaterally and cyclical.

The expert believes that the European economy may take a specialization course to meet competition from China. Specifically, “producing high-end goods in the case of products such as footwear, automotive parts, or providing after-sales services for industrial equipment.” Also considered feasible in the future the introduction into the Chinese market for European companies specializing in environmental and recycling technologies.