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50% in 2002 as compared to the previous year, reaching 996 billion US-dollars, while
in 2000 the value of worldwide Mergers and Acquisitions had been substantially
more than 3 trillion US-dollars, thereby accounting for by far the largest share of
FDI-Flows. 62
The “World Investment Report 2003 - FDI Policies for Development: National
and International Perspectives” of the UNCTAD 63 also complained about the worldwide
decrease in FDI-Flows from “$1.4 trillion in 2000 to $650 billion in 2002, raising
considerable concerns about prospects for achieving the Millenium Development
Goals,” 64 in numbers: from 1,400,000,000,000 in 2000 to 650,000,000,000 in 2002.
Latin America, according to the World Investment Report 2003, accounted for 56
billion US-dollars of FDI-Flows in 2002. This corresponds to the lowest level since
1996. The decrease of investment flows occurred especially in the services area
(telecommunications and banking sector) in Argentina, Brazil and Chile. 65
The years 1996 to 2000 recorded a worldwide boom in cross-border investment
flows. A large part of these FDI flows, however, were Mergers & Acquisitions and not
Greenfield-Investment, so that the exploding capital flows between 1996 and 2000
can be explained by the hysterical wave of M&A at the end of the nineties, which
in Latin America also coincided with privatization and neoliberal market-opening
policies in entire economic sectors, which were pushed forward by the IMF and the
World Bank and were accompanied by serious social problems for the population of
the respective countries.
These developments, however, did not stop the authors of the UNCTAD’s World
Investment Report from complaining about the decrease between 2000 and 2002,
nor from creating a central measure out of the boom, which turned out to be a bubble
and was unproductive in terms of solemn development objectives: They [the authors
of the UNCTAD’s World Investment Report] affirm that the decrease of these investment-flows
would be “raising considerable concerns about prospects for achieving
the Millenium Development Goals” 66 - as if flourishing international capital transaction
would constitute a condition and especially a guarantee for development.
These Millenium Development Goals, passed by the General Assembly of the
62 See Financial Times Deutschland, http://www.ftd.de/ub/fi/1039964401475.html?nv=rs.
63 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD): World Investment Report 2003 - FDI Policies for
Development: National and International Prespectives, New York/Geneva 2003.
64 ibid., p. iii.
65 ibid., pp. 52.
66 ibid., p. iii.
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