Joint Investment promotion program implemented with UN

(Caracas, September 11, 1990).- A program to identify and promote projects in the industrial, agro-industrial and tourism sectors of the five Andean countries has been started by the UN jointly with CAF. The program will reactivate the productive sector, optimizing foreign investments and linking businesses in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela with the capital, technology and markets of third countries.

With the type of foreign contribution that the program aims to attract, local companies - both public and private, particularly small- and medium-sized manufacturing industry – will be able to associate with investors from third countries through joint ventures, credits for purchase and installation of fixed assets, supply of technology and access to markets.

The projects will be identified by direct contact with the businesses, which will be given the technical assistance needed to develop them (access to databanks on technology, market profiles and industrial information), in order to present a uniform and systematic proposal to foreign investors with the use of computerized models (PROSPIN and COMFAR).

Promotion overseas The UN agencies UNIDO and UNDP will promote the projects and search for foreign partners through their offices in industrialized countries, especially Germany, Austria, United States, France, Italy, Japan, Korea, Poland and Switzerland.

Another promotion mechanism will be to send delegates from the Andean business sector to these countries with the objective of presenting and promoting the projects and explaining the political, social and economic situation of the country they represent.

The Program – financed on a tripartite basis by UNDP, UNIDO and CAF – is based in the UNIDO offices in Caracas with the following liaison institutions: Bolivian Confederation of Private Businesses; Colombian National Planning Department; CENDES in Ecuador; and Development Finance Corporation SA (CONFIDE) in Peru.