Foreword

The FDI Qualities Policy Toolkit reviews policy practices to improve the impacts of foreign direct investment (FDI) on sustainable development. It focuses on four areas of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): productivity and innovation, job quality and skills, gender equality and decarbonisation. Each chapter describes how to assess the impacts of FDI and provides policy recommendations related to governance, domestic and international regulation, financial and technical support, and information and facilitation services.

The Toolkit complements the OECD Policy Framework for Investment, providing more tailored guidance on improving FDI impacts across these four areas of the SDGs. It also draws upon the FDI Qualities Indicators that measure the sustainable development impacts of FDI across host countries. The development of the Toolkit was supported by concrete examples derived from a mapping of FDI Qualities policies and institutions in ten OECD member and partner countries, an initial mapping of FDI-SME policies and institutions in 27 EU countries, and in-depth country assessments of Jordan, Portugal and the Slovak Republic.

This Toolkit builds on an OECD-EU project on FDI and SMEs undertaken by three OECD bodies: the Investment Committee, the Committee on SMEs and Entrepreneurship and the Regional Development Policy Committee. It also includes inputs from the EU-OECD Programme on Investment in the Mediterranean.

The Toolkit incorporates comments received from the OECD Investment Committee and the FDI Qualities Policy Network over 2019-22 and from two public consultation processes in 2021. It also benefits from comments received from directorates across the OECD; international organisations (including the ILO, ITC, UNCTAD, UNIDO, WB and WTO) and OECD stakeholder bodies (BIAC, TUAC and OECD Watch).