UNIDO at World Investment Forum 2021
On 21 October 2021, the 25th WAIPA World Investment Conference (WIC) of the World Association of Investment Promotion Agencies was organized alongside the virtual edition of UNCTAD’s 7th World Investment Forum 2021 (WIC), held between 18-22 October 2022 as the world’s largest gathering of investment promotion stakeholders from public and private sector and international organizations. In the wake of COVID-19, the conference discussed under the theme “Regeneration of IPAs in a new decade” the crucial importance of IPAs during and after the pandemic that impacted lives and economies globally.
Bringing together IPAs (Investment Promotion Agencies) from all over the world, government officials, development sector leaders, decision makers from private sector and academia relevant to Foreign Domestic Investment (FDI) policy and strategy, the WIC reviewed in several panels the past two and a half decades of investment promotion, debated the rise of digitalization and the important of data-driven investment promotion, and examined how investors and locations alike benefit from IPAs and how IPAs are able to highlight their role further as critical element in the promotion and facilitation of investments.
UNIDO was represented by Bernardo Calzadilla Sarmiento, Managing Director of the UNIDO’s Directorate of Digitalization, Technology and Agri-Business. “The pandemic has shown a rift between IPAs that have made sufficient investment and creating a professional digital presence leveraging instruments such as virtual site visits, online events, semi-automated inquiry handling of investors, geo data and other versus IPAs with limited digital footprint” said Calzadilla Sarmiento, in his speech on the theme “A quarter century of investment promotion: success stories and the future outlook”.
Earlier during the week of the 7th WIF, on 19 October 2021, Calzadilla Sarmiento also participated in a high-level panel themed “Investments in Technology holds reigns of the Future Manufacturing” organized by the Annual Investment Meeting (AIM) under the patronage of the Ministry of Economy of the United Arab Emirates.
For further information contact Stefan Kratzsch (S.Kratzsch [at] unido.org (S[dot]Kratzsch[at]unido[dot]org))
