The plurilateral negotiations in the WTO on services domestic regulation and investment facilitation for development, commonly referred to as joint statement initiatives, were running in parallel until the end of 2021. Both negotiations seek to devise or have come up with disciplines that would apply good regulatory principles to WTO members’ regulatory procedures and requirements affecting services trade and cross-border investment. These disciplines pursue the objective of creating a more transparent and predictable regulatory environment that would facilitate the uptake of economic activities by (foreign) services/service suppliers and investors. This chapter examines the approach taken by the two initiatives to regulatory disciplines. It shows that their approach to regulatory disciplines is largely similar, but their stance on special and differential treatment sets them apart.

This chapter examines what the global technology sector and digital economy firms seek in terms of domestic policy environments and ecosystem factors to attract inbound foreign direct investment (FDI), focusing on factors amenable to policy and regulatory interventions in the short to medium term. The analysis then evaluates recent international economic cooperation efforts on investment in intergovernmental fora, including the G20, APEC, the OECD, the WTO, and free trade agreements, to address the needs of these firms. Despite the recent deterioration in trust between major economic powers, the chapter notes incremental but potentially important progress being made on improving the regulatory governance that underpins countries’ investment environments, both in ongoing negotiations to conclude an Agreement on Investment Facilitation for Development (IFD) at the WTO and in bilateral, regional, and megaregional free trade agreements.

This chapter focuses on Brazil’s ’Agreement on Cooperation and Facilitation of Investments’ (ACFIs), which has received significant attention in the context of foreign investment facilitation. It describes the genesis and evolution of Brazil’s ACFI practice since 2015, from modest bilateral initiatives to leadership in plurilateral negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The chapter adopts a three-pillar framework of the ACFI model and details the corresponding governance structure and supporting institutions established domestically within Brazil to implement the commitments and principles laid out in its ACFIs. The study highlights Brazil’s institutional reforms designed to effectively implement its ACFI obligations, emphasizing the concept of ’investment facilitation’ as the key driving force behind Brazil’s investment regulations. The chapter concludes with possible lessons for domestic governance challenges that states participating in a future WTO plurilateral agreement may encounter.

Investment facilitation, aiming for improvements in the transparency, efficiency, and predictability of domestic investment frameworks, plays an important role in complementing currently prevailing international measures for attracting external development. Finance and various investment facilitation reform initiatives are under way at multiple levels. However, empirical evidence on currently prevailing levels of adoption of investment facilitation measures and resulting reform and support needs is still scarce.

This chapter explores why African countries, except those in the West African bloc, are reluctant to participate in the initiative to conclude an agreement on investment facilitation within the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the consequences of nonparticipation. The study discusses the core principles of the investment facilitation framework as contained in the leaked Easter Text and finds some of them concerning, including market access being within the scope of the agreement, potentially undermining states’ sovereignty through international cooperation and streamlining of administrative processes, and the lack of development aspects such as the incorporation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The author is concerned about Africa’s nonparticipation, as they will continue to be rule-takers instead of shaping the discussion in their favor. Nonparticipation in the agreement creates a bad signal to investors, threatening investor confidence.

Special economic zones (SEZs) and investment facilitation are among the most discussed policy topics in recent years. They are important investment policy tools in promoting countries’ economic growth. They are closely linked but also have a number of important distinctions. There is a lack of discussion over the nexus between SEZs and investment facilitation. This chapter takes a closer look at the interconnections between SEZs and investment facilitation. Through a brief overview of the development of these two policy instruments, it analyzes their linkages and discusses their areas of divergence. It shows that SEZs and investment facilitation can be complementary and mutually supportive. It advocates enhanced coherence and possible coordination between investment facilitation and SEZ policy schemes.

After lengthy and tough negotiations, China became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, which is widely considered as a landmark economic event in modern world history. The WTO accession marked a milestone of China’s economic opening and success in integration into the world economy. China’s trade opening, as well as global economic integration and multilateral trade rules, worked together to facilitate China gaining extraordinary economic and trade growth. In return, China has proved to become an indispensable engine for global economic growth, and its WTO membership has made the WTO a truly global and more relevant international organization. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of China’s WTO membership, this chapter focuses on China’s performance in the multilateral trading system during the past 20 years, analyzing China’s overall implementation of WTO commitments and its contribution to the world economy and trade. More specifically, it takes the Initiative on Investment Facilitation as an example to analyze China’s leading role in spearheading recent “Joint Statement Initiatives” under the WTO framework. Furthermore, the chapter touches upon how China could assume its responsibility and commitment to the broader WTO reform.

Today almost every country in the world has an investment promotion agency (IPA) to attract and retain foreign investment. In principle, IPAs could be an important tool in advancing the sustainable development agenda, as they provide a country-led, domestically legitimate means of catalyzing new foreign investments. We argue that IPAs’ governance structures condition their potential contribution to sustainable development, by leading them to privilege certain ideas and interests over others. Specifically, IPAs that are more autonomous from the government bureaucracy tend to prioritise activities to increase overall inflows of foreign investment, while IPAs that are more integrated into the government bureaucracy are more likely to structure their activities in ways that prioritise their countries’ industrial policy goals. Evidence from World Bank surveys of IPA officials and a case study of Costa Rica’s IPA demonstrate how agencies’ governance structures incentivise them to approach their mandates in different ways, which in turn influences their contribution to sustainable, inclusive development. This research enriches our understanding of investment promotion as a tool for sustainable development and contributes to ongoing debates on how states manage economic globalisation.

International migration is a relative newcomer on the “trade and” agenda and has hitherto received relatively little attention in trade and migration studies alike. The inclusion of labour migration as one essential mode of cross-border trade in services, so-called Mode 4 in the GATS, opened the agenda for more far-reaching developments at the level of regional and bilateral free-trade agreements . This chapter shows that this deepening of the trade-migration nexus is intricately linked to power shifts in the global economy and the rise of regionalism. For the international trade regime in 2025, this means that, in combination with the ongoing power transitions, the trade-related mobility agenda is likely to expand beyond what the former sponsors of the GATS agreement, the European Union (EU) and the United States, originally intended.

The total share of foreign direct investment (FDI) flows to least developed countries (LDCs) remains very low and is often focused on resource extraction. Whereas most studies have focused on host countries’ measures to attract FDI, this chapter instead focuses on what the development partners of LDCs can do to promote and facilitate more quality and sustainable FDI to LDCs, either directly or indirectly. Direct support measures support outward FDI, such as financing programs and risk management instruments. Indirect support include support for improving the investment climate or the negotiation of international investment agreements. This chapter suggests certain avenues and likely scenarios that assist the customizations of home country measures (HCMs) to work for LDCs. For example, while it is laudable that home country governments support their firms to invest in LDCs, this may distort competition among foreign investors but also domestic firms in the similar sector. Support measures can also be designed conditional upon investor’s compliance with certain criteria of sustainable and responsible investment, such as technology transfer, climate protection, and respect for human rights.