Core Advisory Services

FIAS offers a comprehensive range of services tailored to governments' needs to help them improve their investment climate for domestic and foreign investors and maximize impact on poverty reduction. Specialists identify practices that impede productive investment, design financially and politically practical plans of action, support clients through the phase of solution design, and help ensure sufficient technical and financial resources are available for implementation. FIAS collaborates with other international financial institutions and bilateral partners to ensure that clients are provided with appropriate support throughout the reform process. Progress is continually monitored and evaluated for effectiveness.

FIAS core advisory services help client governments to promote economy-wide regulatory reforms, assess the competitiveness of promising industry sectors, and design institutions and reform processes to sustain implementation.

Core advisory services:

• investment climate diagnostics
• investment laws and promotion
• administrative barriers solutions
• industry competitiveness

Diagnostics
FIAS undertakes diagnostic studies to identify a country's main policy impediments to productive foreign direct investment. These studies are typically the first piece of work that FIAS carries out in a country or region. In some cases, a diagnostic study may also be done if there has been a hiatus in a past program or where a new government has taken office. Diagnostic studies comprise broad reviews of various aspects of the investment environment. Most frequently, they examine the legal and regulatory environment (commercial code and company law, bankruptcy law, and investment legislation and related secondary laws, such as licensing, trade regulation, product certification, and other administrative procedures); direct and indirect taxation regimes, including investment incentives; and investment promotion policies and institutions. Diagnostic studies can also examined competition policy, linkages, and market structure and privatization as well as analyze the investment environment of a group of countries participating in economic unions.
Case study: Investment Climate Diagnostics
Project: FDI Indicators

Investment Laws and Promotion
Investment legislation is the reflection of a country’s investment policy and it is often the chief normative instrument to implement this policy. FIAS’ advice on investment legislation starts with a review of existing or draft legislation, in which we identify eventual flaws and inconsistencies and offer concrete recommendations based on "international best practices". FIAS can review a country's policy, legal, and regulatory environment and recommend measures in such areas as screening of projects, capital restrictions and repatriation, access to land, or investment protection under national laws and international conventions. FIAS advice is based on our intimate knowledge of what a good investment climate/policy should be, of the type of incentives a country should have, and of how simple and transparent administrative processes should be.

Effective investment promotion can influence investor decisions and affect the amount and kind of investments a country receives. Efficient agencies are needed to attract FDI and help manage investment policy. FIAS helps these agencies formulate promotion strategies that identify competitive advantages and target specific opportunities. Strategies can be conceived on national, regional, or sectoral levels. FIAS also helps countries design efficient promotion institutions, often by adapting models that have proven successful elsewhere in implementing investment promotion strategies.
Case study: Collaboration with MIGA

Administrative Barriers
FIAS has developed an important tool that analyzes bureaucratic barriers that snarl and slow the establishment and subsequent operation of businesses. FIAS documents such procedural barriers and pinpoints problems to help governments eliminate them, and streamline the regulations that remain.
Case study: Licensing Reform in Kenya


Industry Competitiveness
A key component of a sound business environment is a competition framework that fosters the flow of economic benefits to all segments of society. This framework includes both general pro-market policies, such as trade liberalization and privatization, and more specific provisions to fight collusive behaviors, rent-seeking behavior, and other abuses of market power. FIAS can help assess constraints to competitive market structures and design the legal and institutional framework for a better pro-competition policy, improve competition in key strategic sectors, and address uncompetitive practices among firms. FIAS also works with relevant government agencies and stakeholders to design solutions that use corporate social responsibility to help national competitiveness, including policy incentives, implementation mechanisms, monitoring and inspection, and reporting frameworks.
Case study: Identifying Constraints to Competitiveness