Potential Investment Facilitation Agreement: Possible Scenarios and Their Impact on Countries’ Regulations

Investment facilitation covers a wide range of areas, all with the ultimate focus on allowing investment to flow efficiently and for the greatest benefit. International discussions on investment facilitation have been very dynamic. Since the idea of an investment facilitation agreement (IFA) was proposed by a group of experts in 2015, it was pursued in the G20 and discussed among the World Trade Organization (WTO) members. In this study we map the legal commitments in potential IFAs onto an index that measures investment facilitation developed by the German Development Institute (DIE), namely Investment Facilitation Index (IFI). Hereby, we create different scenarios for the potential multilateral investment facilitation framework. We start with a lower bound IFA, which includes investment facilitation commitments covered by different free trade agreements (e.g., CETA, CPTPP, NAFTA), and proceed with an ambitious IFA, which covers investment facilitation measures mentioned in all available proposals submitted to the WTO. Moreover, we also take into account a broader set of countries expanding the current list of 69 participants of the Structured Discussions at the WTO with India and the USA. This analysis contributes to the very scarce research on investment facilitation and informs policymakers about potential changes in countries’ rules and regulations due to the multilateral IFA currently discussed among the WTO members. The results illustrate which commitments represent a common ground and can be easily negotiated given currently implemented measures by a large number of participating countries. Moreover, we demonstrate which IFA framework is the most beneficial for participants due to the highest reform potential. In addition, we investigate the differences in reform burden and expected improvements for different country groups, e.g., developed vs. developing countries.