Launch of the World Investment Report 2025
Thank you for joining us today in person and online for the launch of one of UNCTAD’s key annual flagship publications – the World Investment Report 2025 – which gives a comprehensive picture of the state of foreign direct investment all over the world, helping us understand the state of the world economy and the challenges for developing countries.
This year’s report brings a clear and urgent message: productive global foreign direct investment continues to be weak, with a further negative outlook for 2025 and with consequences most sharply felt in the developing world.
The topline figure is a 4% increase in global foreign direct investment. But this 4% increase in global foreign direct investment is due to volatile financial flows, because of conduit flows through a few economies.
If we exclude these volatile flows in 2024, what we find is a stark picture – that productive international investment is shrinking.
In 2024, global foreign direct investment fell by 11%. That’s the second straight year of decline.
And behind those numbers are very real consequences – jobs not created, infrastructure not built, sustainable development delayed.
What we see here is not just a downturn – it’s a pattern. It’s not something that happened one year and we’ll recover the other year. We have a pattern. And this is happening because of growing geopolitical tensions, rising trade barriers, increasing screening measures for foreign investment, especially in developed countries, and a shift in priorities towards short-term risk avoidance and national interest. The global investment landscape has become more volatile, more selective and more uncertain.
This is a pattern we must break.
As the world navigates overlapping crises – climate, conflict, inequality – the flow of investment capital has surely not responded with the urgency we need.
The report also offers regional insights, where some countries showed signs of resilience – and these are good news, and we need to stress them too.
While the global picture is very worrying – as I said before – there are also examples of resilience and opportunity.
Let’s recognize and build on them. Let me give you some of the main figures.
Africa saw a 75% increase in foreign direct investment inflows. This was driven mainly by a landmark project in Egypt. But even if you take that project away, Africa saw a rise in foreign direct investment of 12%. This is good news.
In South-East Asia, greenfield investments had the second highest level ever, of $225 billion.
India showed strength in new projects. Even if total inflows declined slightly, we see important new projects going ahead.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, we saw a 12% drop overall but strong activity in three countries – Argentina, Mexico and Brazil.
The Middle East, especially the Gulf countries, continued to attract solid flows as part of broader efforts to diversify beyond oil.
As we can see, these are success stories. But unfortunately, we feel that they are more exceptions than the rule.
The world needs more than isolated success stories.
So who is being left behind?
Too many developing countries are not catching up – despite the urgency of the moment. Investment remains highly concentrated.
It’s true, foreign investment remained stable in many cases but it was stability in a very low level, so it doesn’t allow us to see the future with more optimism.
Least developed countries, landlocked developing nations and small island developing states are still capturing only a small fraction of global flows.
Investment in SDG sectors – one of our main worries in the report – is falling fast and seriously hurting the development of countries in an already concerning moment for the world economy and global trade.
The most worrying trend is this continuing decline in investment in key development sectors – those directly aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals.
Investment in renewable energy fell by 31%. Investment in water and sanitation is down 30%. Agrifood systems saw investment drop 19%.
Only the health sector saw an increase – up nearly 20% – but still accounts for less than $15 billion globally.
Let’s be very clear. You cannot build sustainable development if you don’t invest in its foundations. Right now, those foundations are crumbling.
A special feature of this report is about the digital economy.
We see that the digital divide is growing wider.
Yes, there is growth in digital sectors – foreign direct investment in digital industries rose by 14% last year. But as we said before, 80% of those investments went to only 10 countries – of the 195 member states of UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
Most developing countries remain excluded from the digital boom – held back by poor infrastructure, limited policy readiness and weak investment ecosystems.
Many of these countries have digital strategies but without links to industrial policy, investment frameworks or data governance, so it’s difficult for them to deliver an impact.
Digital transformation must connect, not exclude. Right now, the door to opportunity is still closed for too many.
Even more alarming is what we see in infrastructure investment.
International project finance – so critical for energy, transport and public services – fell by 26%. And the worst impacts are in the countries that need it the most.
So, what can we do to have not only more but also better foreign direct investment? What can we do for the investment system to deliver for people and the planet?
The report calls for action in six key areas.
First, reforms to the international financial architecture, especially important for the 4th Financing for Development Conference that will take place in Seville at the end of this month.
We know that we need to strengthen multilateral development banks, use new tools like hybrid capital, de-risking in guarantee tools and rechanneling special drawing rights.
And address the debt problem, because the debt problem is also at the heart of what’s happening to many developing countries. We know that last year, our optimism was based on a possibility of having higher growth in 2025 and lower interest rates. But this year we know that projections for 2025, precisely because of uncertainty over the trade system, global growth is not going to be as high as we expected. Growth will be weaker – 2.3% – according to our projections. And we coincide in this with the projections of the World Bank. Interest rates will be higher for longer, as we saw in the decisions yesterday of the United States Federal Reserve to maintain interest rates.
Another problem is to unlock capital through multilateral cooperation to mobilize sustainable finance. We talked about the blue and green bonds that are good news – a new development – and are picking up. But private sustainable finance is not picking up. So we need to align both – public and private capital –with long-term development priorities. We need to embed sustainability in investment decision-making, align with standards, combat greenwashing and support countries for policy reform. Only by doing this can we regain trust and credibility in sustainable finance.
We need to close the digital investment divide. As I said, we’ll expand on this to
support infrastructure, inclusive strategies and innovation ecosystems.
We need to reform investment policies and direct capital to the real economy: energy, industry, tech and infrastructure. So that we can steer capital towards these very important sectors.
And finally, we need to modernize international investment governance, update international rules to protect the public interest, ensure fair treatment of investors and preserve national policy space.
These recommendations are a blueprint for change, not a to-do list.
Today we are sounding an alarm.
This moment matters, because 2025 is a crucial year on the global agenda.
As we head towards the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development, the stakes are high. If we want to redirect global capital towards a fairer, more inclusive and more sustainable future, the time to act is now.
Investment is not just about money. It’s about trust. It’s about fairness. And it’s about a future that includes everyone.
I thank you.