At the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi at the end of February, an agreement on Investment Facilitation for Development (IFD) negotiated by two thirds of the WTO membership is to be adopted.
©IDOS
At the invitation of the lead negotiators of the IFD agreement, Ambassador Boza (Chile) and Ambassador Park (Republic of Korea), Dr Axel Berger, IDOS Deputy Director (interim), spoke at a WTO workshop about the economic impact of the agreement. He emphasised that, on the one hand, particularly low- and middle-income countries can benefit from the IFD Agreement, but that they also need technical and financial support to implement the obligations of the agreement. In recent years, IDOS has conducted extensive empirical research into the design and impact of the IFD agreement and has developed its own Investment Facilitation Index. Axel Berger will present this research at the WTO Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi.
