UNIDO ITPOs’ Delegates Programme

UNIDO’s Investment and Technology Promotion Offices (ITPOs) play a vital role in advancing industrial productivity through investment promotion. The Delegates Programme is one of the ITPOs’ integral service, welcoming and training hundreds of investment promotion delegates, helping build pockets of excellence within developing countries’ investment promotion agencies. This approach has proven effective in concrete new foreign direct investment (FDI) deals.

ITPO Japan is amongst the ITPOs that makes most intensive use of this institutional capacity building and promotion tool, inviting 5-10 delegates per year from selected countries to engage in bilateral business discussions and attract FDI and technologies from Japanese companies. Target industries include food, automotive, textiles, renewable energy, transportation and logistics. ITPO Japan succeeded to conclude several investment deals, with delegates involved in the promotion, facilitation and negotiation, providing a sense of continuity and trust to Japanese investors. One example are investments in the auto parts sector in Morocco.

Mohamed Aref Hassani, a delegate representing the Department of Investments in Morocco (now Agence Marocaine de Développement des Investissements, AMDIE) visited Japan as a delegate since the 1990s. As a result of multiple visits, followed up with business missions by investors to Morocco, several Japanese companies started doing business in the country. The most notable were in auto parts. For example, Yazaki Corporation invested in 3 plants manufacturing wire harnesses mainly for export markets in Europe. The investments generated employment for more than 10,000 people, helped develop value-added supply chains in Morocco, increased the country’s export capacities, and provided opportunities for women’s empowerment through employment. Also, all plants are run by Moroccan staff and managers, demonstrating the positive impact of FDI on transferring not only technical but also managerial know how. The delegate facilitated all phases of the investment and implementation with Yazaki Corporation attesting to the effectiveness of this approach. Recently, Gerd Müller, Director General of UNIDO, visited MidParc Casablanca, an Aerospace Industry Free Zone in Morocco, and met its Managing Director, Hassani, who is the former delegate of ITPO Japan now promoting investments in the aerospace industry.

For further information read the brochure on partnerships of Japanese private sectors and UNIDO here.

For more information contact ITPO Japan (itpo.tokyo [at] unido.org (itpo[dot]tokyo[at]unido[dot]org)).