Ratios of inward and outward FDI stock to GDP, and FDI flows to gross fixed
capital formation are tabulated for most countries in the various World
Investment Reports of UNCTAD. They also calculate a transnationality index of
FDI host countries, which averages the four shares: FDI flows (as a percentage
of GFCF), FDI inward stocks as a percentage of GDP, value added of foreign
affiliates as a percentage of GDP, and employment of foreign affiliates as a
precentage of total employment. The developed countries which the 2000 report
tabulates (with New Zealand at the top!) average around 13%, and the tabulated
developing countries 14%.
Unfortunately they don't seem interested in tabulating profits!
It's difficult to say what profit figures would show. The ability of TNCs to
transfer their profits from one country another for tax, political or internal
reasons must make the profit attributed to their operations in any one country
arbitrary to a degree.
Even without deliberate transfer pricing, it is conceivable that (say) Nike
would put up with lower rates of profit in Indonesia because the manufacture of
its shoes is such a small part of the cost. Most of the profits may well be made
elsewhere in the chain of distribution and sale. I'm not saying that it
necessarily happens like that, but it is quite conceivable.
To say TNCs chase cheap labour is to oversimplify. Certainly that is an
important part of their motivation, but since around 76% of FDI was to developed
countries (in 1999) - and 90% of mergers and acquisitions - it isn't the whole
story. Other motivations include domination of their selected markets,
increasing scale for competitive reasons, and security of investment.
Profits aside, two features of FDI which seem to clearly differentiate developed
and developing countries (in the context of the US foreign investment thread,
imperial vs neo-colonies) appear to be the balance between inward and outward
investment stock (biased towards outward for developed countries; overwhelmingly
inward for developing); and greenfield vs mergers/acquisition investment (over
80% of FDI was MAs for all countries in 1999; but about one third of FDI to
developing countries).
Grant Lee remarks below that Singapore's inward FDI is still well above
outward FDI in this city-state where annual trade is also 160% !!! of GDP.
Singapore has unusually high FDI, but its high level of trade is no mystery.
Like Hong Kong, it has a huge entrepot function, with high levels of
re-exports - importing for the purpose of re-exporting with little or no work
done on the goods on the way through. In 1999 Hong Kong (popn about 6 million)
had the world's 10th largest international trading volume (mainland China was
9th). In 2000 88.5% of its exports were re-exports, a third of these to mainland
China. Its foreign investment is even more remarkable (and
statistics-distorting!): with the exceptions of China and its former colonial
master, the U.K., the top-ranked sources and destinations of Hong Kong
investment are the tax havens of the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands,
and Bermuda (1998 figures). The ownership of this investment is certainly
elsewhere, including the U.S., Europe, Hong Kong itself, and China.
Bill
Grant Lee wrote:
Bill Burgess [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
country inward FDI stock/GDPoutward FDI stock/GDP
Canada 23.9% 26.9%
Australia 28.117.1
UK 23.335.9
France 11.715.9
Singapore 85.856.1
Malaysia67.022.7
Indonesia 73.32.4
Argentina 13.95.4
Brazil 17.11.4
Interesting figures. I haven't had time to look at the comparable figures
for other countries. In any case they don't prove a permanent/structural
exclusion from imperial activity. For example, what about Hong Kong
(pre-1997, not that it is yet a homogenous part of China)? The last I heard
there was hardly any manufacturing left in Hong Kong because proprietors had
shifted operations to the mainland. South Africa? Saudi Arabia?
Note the
obvious difference in rates of outward FDI, plus the fact that most FDI by
Canada, France, etc. is in other imperialist countries while most FDI by
Indonesia, Argentina, etc. is in fellow semi-colonies.
Every bourgeoisie has to start somewhere. For example --- and I'm not going
to revisit the complexities and vitriol of the Kenya Debate --- but I just
came across this on the web:
Andrea Goldstein and Njuguna S. Ndung'u, OECD Development Centre Technical
Paper No. 171: New Forms Of Co-Operation And Integration In Emerging Africa
Regional Integration Experience, March 2001.
quote: (p. 16) Table 5. Import Sources (1997)*
(From)Kenya Tanzania Uganda
(To)Kenya-0**
