Message of President
Message of WAIPA President
The change of an era – from greed and exuberance to what we learned to be a ‘new normal’ – has turned the use of historical models and econometric forecasting based on previous experience not only useless, but indeed counterproductive.
Such challenging times have demanded bold, innovative, strategic measures from WAIPA. Aware of the fact that the current prospects of less FDI flows will inevitably lead to tougher competition for investment projects we targeted our actions in order to ensure a refined interaction between IPAs and the governments of the countries they market abroad. We understand that it is upon IPAs to keep the dialogue channels open with key governmental instances and to promote consultations with the civil society on legislative and regulatory changes that will influence businesses. Additionally, WAIPA keeps encouraging its members to strive for transparency, accountability, qualified human capital, a strong advocacy role and effective aftercare. Those are, unarguably, essential tools to attend existing investors as well as to attract new ones.
The current WAIPA administration has embraced cooperation vigorously, understanding it as the key driver to every process and action related to investment promotion. Not just on the south-south level, but in all possible dimensions: adjusting investment needs with investment levels; encouraging public-private partnerships; engaging into inter-governmental consultations, bringing governments to the roundtable to negotiate regulatory reforms and make their economies more attractive to foreign investors; collaborating and cooperating with other IPAs and international organizations and concentrating efforts on making of FDI flows a secure, win-win process. Furthermore, the renewed role played by WAIPA in the promotion of benchmarking practices, IPA performance assistance and capacity-building actions has definitely helped member IPAs to efficiently respond to investors´ needs of more sophisticated services and investment information.