WAIPA Annual Report 2011

WAIPA World
Investment Conference 2011
The WAIPA World Investment
Conference 2011 was held in Geneva,
home of the WAIPA Permanent
Secretariat, on September 5-6, 2011.
In its sixteenth edition, the WAIPA
World Investment Conference built
on the successful debate format
consistently implemented at WAIPA
WIC08 Rio, WAIPA WIC09 Milan and
WAIPA WIC10 Buenos Aires. The
Annual Meeting of WAIPA Members
was coordinated by Chairman
Alessandro Teixeira and co-chaired
by WAIPA Vice-Presidents Maria
Paz Ramos and Emmanuel Ole-
Naiko. Approximately 100 Member
IPAs were present in the General
Assembly of September 5, 2011.
Following this institutional meeting,
participants joined the four plenary
sessions respectively titled “Back to
Basics: Ending the Short Term View”;
“Changing Macro-Economic Realities”;
“The Long-Term View – Innovation,
Green Technology, Economic
Development & FDI”; and “Narrowing
the Technology Gap – Host Country
Innovation, R&D Relocation and
FDI”. In a reference to the WIC11,
WAIPA President Alessandro Teixeira
commented: “Our Conference has
become a key occasion to discuss
matters such as the changes brought
on by the banking and sovereigndebt
crisis, the opportunities afforded
by recent shifts in global economic
power, as well as actions and
measures that address the mismatch
between investors’ shorter-term goals
and the nations’ longer-term social
and economic development needs.”
The first plenary session hence
debated the disconnection between
financial investors’ goals of fast
returns and the need for productive,
longer-term investments on the part of
governments. The panel considered
how countries were now prioritizing
FDI, in the wake of the great recession
that followed the 2008 banking crisis.
Panellists raised the question on to
which extent sovereign wealth funds
and development banks could step
up to fill the void left by traditional
funding sources, and which measures
governments could take to better
align capital markets to longer-term
national needs. This plenary session
was conducted by high-level guests
such as H.E. Sheika Lubna Al-Qamsi,
Minister of Foreign Trade, UAE; H.E.
Laura Alfaro, Minister of Economic
Development of Costa Rica; and the
hosting speaker H.E. Alessandro
Teixeira, WAIPA President and
Deputy-Minister of Development,
Industry and Foreign Trade of Brazil.
Representatives from the Moscow
Stock Exchange (MICEX) and from
the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB)
also paid their valuable contribution
to the session. A brief video clip of
this opening panel has been made
available on waipa.tv (bottom left
corner of our website).
WAIPA Report of Activities 2011-2012 23