Reports

Latin America and the Caribbean needs an ambitious and comprehensive investment agenda to embark on a stronger and more sustainable development trajectory. The 16th edition of the Latin American Economic Outlook proposes ways to make this possible through co-ordinated actions by policy makers, the private sector and international partners. It argues that to close existing investment gaps and overcome the region’s structural challenges, it is essential to scale up domestic and foreign investment. These investments should be a catalyst for better quality jobs and an upgraded production structure, harnessing the potential of LAC’s endowments and of the green and digital transitions. Better governance and information are key to promoting effective and efficient public and private investments. Public institutions are fundamental to aligning investments with national development strategies while building stronger social contracts. The report presents a series of options for financing this new investment agenda, including innovative debt instruments and a renewed role for development finance institutions. The report also highlights the importance of reinvigorated international partnerships across the investment agenda.

This paper explores different frameworks of subnational investment promotion and facilitation and focuses on the link between these frameworks and the degree of and the degree of countries’ decentralisation, their role in regional FDI attractiveness and local development, and their relations with the levels of FDI regional disparities. It also examines characteristics of subnational investment promotion strategies and the quality of institutional relationships within regions, across regions and with the central government.

L'élaboration des politiques a toujours consisté à faire des choix, gérer des compromis et équilibrer plusieurs objectifs et priorités pour la prise de décisions budgétaires complexes. Pourtant, ces dernières années, les décideurs politiques ont été confrontés à un nombre croissant de priorités, d'où une pression plus forte pour améliorer l'efficacité des dépenses publiques. Il existe de solides arguments en faveur d'un investissement public dans une éducation de haute qualité du fait de ses résultats économiques ainsi qu'aux retombées sociales plus générales pour les individus et la société. Mais alors qu'une éducation de haute qualité continuera à permettre aux individus et aux sociétés de prospérer et de se remettre des perturbations, les ministères de l'éducation devront repenser leur façon d'investir dans l'éducation pour garantir l'optimisation de l’utilisation de ces ressources. Après une introduction exposant le contexte, cette publication fait le point sur les rendements économiques et les résultats sociaux plus larges dérivés d'une éducation de qualité, plaidant en faveur de la poursuite des investissements publics. Elle se tourne ensuite vers l'examen des moyens intelligents d'investir dans l'éducation et examine les principaux leviers politiques pour optimiser l’utilisation des ressources: gérer et distribuer le financement des écoles pour tirer le meilleur parti des investissements éducatifs ; parvenir à l’équité parallèlement à une plus grande efficacité ; et la planification, le suivi et l'évaluation de l'utilisation efficace du financement des écoles.

Ireland is highly centralised and fast growing, creating co-ordination challenges in terms of delivering key investments and in key policy areas like transport, housing and education. Actors across levels of government recognise a need for a more coordinated approach to the delivery of the National Planning Framework, the principal spatial planning strategy of Project Ireland 2040, which includes also the National Development Plan (public investment).The report has three objectives which ultimately aim to support more balanced regional outcomes in Ireland: i) to clarify the gaps in terms of regional attractiveness across and within Ireland’s regions, including in terms of population and investment attraction; ii) to assess the ability for the National Planning Framework – in its current form – to address these gaps, and iii) to consider what multi-level governance reforms and attractiveness policies can be introduced or scaled to generate more territorially-balanced development.

Banks and other financial institutions have a central role to play in supporting the net zero transition of the business sector and its millions of SMEs. They are working to integrate climate considerations in various aspects of their operations, including strategy, management and financial products. This calls for the development of new internal capacities and access to SME sustainability data and assessments which are currently difficult to obtain. This policy paper presents the findings of a 2023 survey of public development banks and private financial institutions, conducted by the by the OECD Platform on Financing SMEs for Sustainability. It provides insights on financial institutions' current approaches and plans for the integration of climate considerations in their SME operations. It also provides information on the offer of finance and non-financial support for SMEs’ net zero investments and on related SME climate-related data requirements.

Industry decarbonisation is a cornerstone to reach net-zero emissions by this mid-century. The diversity of industrial activities, processes and products, the complexity of global industrial value chains, and the international competition make industry decarbonisation a challenging objective. Annual investments in low-carbon technologies for industry decarbonisation need to increase by a factor of three to five by 2030 compared to current levels to align industrial emissions with net-zero pathways. This paper analyses available financing solutions to scale up investments at pace, especially in emerging and developing economies where industrial production is growing rapidly whilst available finance is limited. It highlights de-risking and financial instruments and models that can help accelerate investments and draws lessons from twelve financing industry decarbonisation case studies which demonstrate how private capital can be mobilised.

The FDI Qualities Review of Croatia provides policy recommendations on the design and implementation of a new strategic framework for investment promotion and facilitation in Croatia. It provides an assessment of how foreign direct investment (FDI) contributes to sustainable development, including productivity and innovation, job quality and skills development, decarbonisation and regional development. It also examines the institutional and policy framework for investment promotion and facilitation at national and subnational levels. It gives an overview of Croatia’s investment incentives regime, focusing on the effective design and implementation of tax incentives. The report indicates potential areas for institutional and policy reform to improve Croatia’s investment climate and strengthen the economic, social and environmental benefits of FDI.

Citizenship and residency by investment (CBI/RBI) programmes are government-administered programmes that grant citizenship or residency to foreign investors by expediting or bypassing normal migration processes. These programmes can help spur economic growth through foreign direct investment, but they are also attractive to criminals and corrupt officials seeking to evade justice and launder the proceeds of crime reaching into the billions of dollars. This report highlights how CBI programmes can allow criminals more global mobility and help them hide their identity and criminal activities behind shell companies in other jurisdictions. It highlights the vulnerabilities of these complex and international investment migration programmes, including the frequent use of intermediaries, involvement of multiple government agencies, abuse by professional enablers and lack of proper governance of the CBI/RBI programmes. The report proposes measures and examples of good practice, that can help policy makers and those responsible for managing the investment migration programmes address these risks. These include an in-depth analysis and understanding of how criminals can exploit CBI or RBI programmes and incorporating risk mitigation measures, such as multi-layer due diligence, in the design of the investment migration programme.

This report explores evidence-based action areas to increase and accelerate the mobilisation of private finance for climate action in developing countries, and the role of international public finance providers in doing so. It draws on best-available data to provide disaggregated analysis of the sectoral, geographic and other features of private finance mobilised by public climate finance and presents key economy-wide, sector-specific, and institutional challenges to private finance mobilisation. The analysis is anchored in the context of the USD 100 billion climate finance goal, initially set for 2020 and extended to 2025, while also providing insights related to mobilising private finance for climate action in developing countries more broadly.