Old Risks-New Solutions, or Is It the Other Way Around?

Abstract

Events like the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), Georgetown symposium demonstrate that there is much to be learned through the sharing of experiences and thinking together about the critical issues that confront our industry as well as new products and ideas. MIGA opened a new Asian hub in Singapore with underwriters in Hong Kong SAR, China and business development staff in Beijing and Tokyo. This hub aims to capitalize on Asian emerging as a new center of outbound investment growth. We have seen a growing base of investors in China as well as other Asian countries looking to go into the challenging market. MIGA also opened a business development office in Paris, which will focus on new business opportunities in Europe as well as the Middle East and North Africa. We view both of these hubs as providing an excellent opportunity for MIGA to support the economic growth of low-income countries through providing the support to South-South investments. Providing political risk insurance (PRI) for outbound investment from the rich and other middle-income countries has become more important as the level of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) growth from these countries has increased.