IAC
launches Jo'burg push with Virtual Exhibit video
 |
| Maria Livanos Cattaui:
IAC offers solutions to those nations who want more foreign investment |
Paris, 16
August 2002 - ICC's
Investment Advisory Council has launched its Earth Summit campaign with a video
submission to the Virtual Exhibit.
The video, featuring ICC
Secretary General Maria Livanos Cattaui, highlights the new range of business
proposals to be put forward in Johannesburg to help increase foreign investment
in least developed countries (LDCs).
The video has been submitted
to the Virtual Exhibit for screening in Johannesburg and webcasting over the
internet during the two weeks of the Summit.
It can be viewed now by clicking on this link: www.worlductx.com/icc
- and can be viewed during the Summit on the Virtual Exhibit website (www.virtualexhibit.net).
IAC is a joint-venture between
ICC and UNCTAD (United Nations Council on Trade and Development), formed last
year to lend business expertise to the challenge of making LDCs more attractive
to foreign direct investment.
At its last meeting in March
in Monterrey, Mexico - presided over by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan - a
group of company CEOs and the heads of state of several African nations decided
on a series of concrete projects which would make their nations more attractive
to foreign investors.
In Johannesburg, IAC leaders
will ag
ain bring together leaders of least developed nations with company CEOs
to discuss a new range of investment boosting projects.
Explaining IAC's mission
in her video statement, Mrs Cattaui says IAC was born of a recognition that
official government aid would never be enough to kickstart the economies of
least developed countries.
"At the outset, we
need to recognise that business is not going to invest in any substantial way
in least developed countries unless it makes good business sense to do so,"
she says.
"What IAC seeks to
do, then, is to find ways to overcome the impediments to investment in these
countries and to offer solutions to those nations who want more foreign investment."
Mrs Cattaui added: "Integral
to this process is an acceptance by the governments of these countries of a
need to put in place some pretty basic infrastructure - and here I am talking
about such things as strong governance structures and stable legal systems."
She further said that "investment
begins at home" and that IAC would also seek to encourage investment in
LDCs by local investors.
Click
here to see the IAC "Virtual Exhibit" video presentation