Western Balkan countries as an attractive investment destination
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Abstract
Foreign direct investments are potentially very important for each country as they could significantly contribute to its economic development. The importance of foreign direct investments reflects in their ability to contribute to development of comparative advantages and competitiveness. In the last 20 years, WB countries have tried to attract as many foreign investors as possible using various policy incentives. Foreign direct investment inflows followed the pace of economic transformation and reforms towards a market economy, leading to economic growth. The aim of this paper is to analyse characteristics of the inflow of foreign direct investments in the Western Balkans (WB) countries, as well as the impact they might have on their economic growth and development. In order to determine the amount of foreign direct investments, but also the position, ie. competitiveness of each of the observed countries, there have been used secondary data from the official UNCTAD reports. The paper will also present an analysis of the greenfield investments for selected economies, as very important type of foreign investments that probably have the largest positive spillovers. The time period covered by this research was from 2010 to 2019. The results of the conducted research indicate that Serbia is the most attractive investment destination, considering that in the observed period, more than 60% of the total amount of foreign direct investments that were directed to the countries of the Western Balkans ended up on its territory.
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