Global Investing

The Arab Spring, for all its democratic and political virtues,  put a big economic dent in the side of participating North African countries, particularly when it came to attracting foreign investment in 2011.

According to a recent UNCTAD report:

Sub-Saharan Africa drew FDI not only to its natural resources, but also to its emerging consumer markets as the growth outlook remained positive. Political uncertainty in North Africa deterred investment in that region.

So far, so logical. Except that simply can’t be all there is to it.

Why? Because plenty of African countries marred by political uncertainty have succeeded in attracting inward FDI.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is a good example. According to political risk consultancy Maplecroft, the country ranks as “extreme” in its risk index for governance framework, regulatory and business environment, conflict and security and human rights and society. It scores 0.00 on business integrity and corruption. And yet in 2011 it attacted over a billion dollars in FDI, according to the UNCTAD report.

Sudan tells a similar story. Its risks are high or extreme for every category that Maplecroft lists, and while its business integrity and corruption score comes in at a comparatively virtuous 0.10, it doesn’t scream out to investors as attractive. Yet Sudan too attracted over $1bln in FDI.

At this stage in the euro zone crisis, we probably don't need to be reminded how uncompetitive the peripheral economies are. (Arguably, of course, they would not be economically peripheral if they were more competitive, but that is for tautologists to debate).  The United Nations, in the form of UNCTAD, has just pinpointed another weakness, however -- huge underperformance  in foreign directed investing, or FDI.

The numbers it has just released only go as far as 2010, so the real crisis cauldron has yet to come.  But they show that Greece and Italy have been punching way below their weight.

Greece has attracted a relatively small amount of foreign direct investment compared to other countries in the European Union (EU). In 2010, Greece’s share in the EU’s GDP was 1.9 per cent. In the same year, however, the inward FDI stock of Greece amounted to €26.2 billion ($35.0 billion), or less than 0.5 percent of the combined FDI stock of EU countries. Similarly, Greece’s share in the total outward FDI stock of EU countries was 0.4 per cent.