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Business strategies and developing countries
05/06/2009 By Fernando Varela
The last two decades have born witness to the increasing internationalisation of Spanish business. Foreign Direct Investment is an ever more important phenomenon given the amount of funds involved and their impact on local economies. Businesses need to increase their markets and developing countries with more or less emerging economies offer many possibilities, which give those countries an opportunity to develop.
UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
In the 1990s, Spain’s Foreign Direct Investment underwent an enormous expansion. However, in the context of developing countries, not all the experiences were positive. Businesses were faced with numerous problems and difficulties, which led to some investments being retracted. Local expectations in general were not met either.
This article by Fernando Varela aims to highlight (though without being prescriptive) the need to find better adapted strategies that could constitute a new investment model for Spanish businesses. It is designed to provoke reflection on the need to learn from experiences and implement approaches that might enable the expectations of both investors and recipients to be met in a mutually beneficial way. Short-term strategies that do not promote development in the societies in which they are integrated seem condemned to failure.
The article also comments on the role of Spanish public bodies in supporting internationalisation in this direction, as well as the opportunities that international cooperation provides in an attempt to achieve greater coherence in Spain’s foreign policy actions.
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Keywords
Civil society European Union Foreign direct investment Spain Spanish AidBio author: Fernando Varela
Fernando Varela is Director of Development Cooperation at EPTISA Internacional. He has led and provided consultancy on numerous technical assistance projects and studies and training for development programmes run by multilateral and bilateral development bodies, mainly of the European Union and Spanish Cooperation
