Originally published at CNBC | August 13, 2013
Since the 1980s, emerging markets have opened up to investment from the rest of the world. The combination of China’s reforms under Deng, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the end of dictatorships in Latin America, meant a raft of enactments of new investment-friendly legislation.
Yet in the past decade, momentum has slowed.
With strong economic growth, and concerns over foreign firms repatriating profits away from domestic economies, emerging markets’ zeal for foreign direct investment (FDI) reform fell away. According to the UN, at the turn of the millennium, just 6 percent of new investment-related policies increased restrictions and regulations. This has since risen to 25 percent.