Eurasian Integration Yearbook 2012

Alexey Kuznetsov. “Monitoring Mutual Investmentsin CIS Countries”The Economics of the Post-Sovietand Eurasian IntegrationEven now it is clear that FDI in the region corresponds to the key theoreticalnotion that foreign economic relations tend to be secondary to the processestaking place in national economies. This relates both to the proportions of CIScountries’ capital export and its structural parameters. Russia’s dominationof mutual FDI is apparently unavoidable due to its economic weight andproliferation of true TNCs. It is remarkable that other important investor countrypairs in the region are motivated by the “neighbourhood effect” which ismore traditional in the geography of FDI than it is in other political initiatives(GUAM, etc.). The industry structure is dominated by traditional specialisations(primarily fuel and energy, and metallurgy). However, mutual investmentin medium- and high-tech industries is also being made. Not only do suchinvestments promote the development of new sectors in smaller CIS countries(e.g., telecommunications), they also help to enhance the export structure ofbigger countries (e.g., in mechanical engineering).The territorial widening of MMI CIS’s “area of responsibility” has been dictatedby the multi-directional nature of most CIS investment links i.e., those of Russia(Kuznetsov, 2006), Ukraine (to an even greater extent) and others. In the lightof plans to promote integration with the EU – under the aegis of the EurasianEconomic Union rather than of Russia alone – the monitoring should be extendedto cover the mutual investment of EU countries and Russia, Ukraine, Belarusand Kazakhstan. And, in the longer term, bearing in mind the growing roleof China, South Korea and other Asian countries, similar monitoring exerciseswould be informative for Russia, Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countriesvis-a-vis the Asia-Pacific region. Unfortunately, to date most FDI data are basedon estimates only and are given little coverage in official CIS publications; thishighlights the need to redouble our efforts in building databases to support theintegration of the EurAsEC countries.ReferencesAdelkhanyan R.A. (editor) (2012) The Registration of Business Entities: ForeignExperience. Moscow: Statut.Amagoh F., Markus U. (2010) Kazakhstan’s Outward Foreign Investments:Issues and Perspectives. Central Asia Business Journal. November.Blyakha N. (2009) Russian foreign direct investment in Ukraine. ElectronicPublications of Pan-European Institute. 7. Available at: http://www.tse.fi/pei/Chetverikova A.S. (2009) The Russian Private Business in Belarus. SovremennayaYevropa. 1.Ernst & Young (2011) Ernst & Young’s 2011 European attractiveness survey.Available at: http://www.ey.com/attractiveness.Expert-400 (2011) The Annual Rating of the Largest Companies. Expert. 39.Eurasian Development Bank147