From sustainability to resilience: Building future-ready investment promotion

Investment Promotion Agencies (IPAs) have long demonstrated a capacity to adapt faster than many other public institutions. Operating closer to market dynamics, they are constantly adjusting to investor needs and shifts in global trends. Positioned at the intersection of global markets and national policy, they are designed to be responsive: listening to investors, interpreting international trends, and translating both into actionable strategies that align with national development priorities. This dynamism makes them particularly agile in moments of uncertainty, when the demand for adaptation is greatest.

This agility has once again become visible in 2025. Faced with geopolitical volatility, shifting industry dynamics, and growing debates over sustainable development, IPAs have not scaled back their ambitions. If anything, they have expanded them. When designing their investment promotion strategies, IPAs draw on a mix of internal and external factors – and new drivers are reshaping the landscape. Although earlier drivers such as agency-level monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) continue to play an important role, industry trends, geopolitical dynamics, and evolving government policies have now moved to the forefront of IPA strategy design. IPAs are broadening their agendas to strengthen resilience, while maintaining earlier commitments to the SDGs and digital transformation.

Adding resilience as a driver could lead to a generation of agencies that are more proactive and better equipped to align investment promotion with both immediate realities and long-term national priorities. This layered approach reflects both the proactive nature of IPAs and their dual role aligned with government priorities while remaining responsive to global investor expectations.

This is not a story of substitution, but of expansion. Agencies are pursuing to support resilient economies while maintaining their existing commitments. Longstanding objectives linked to sustainable development, including environmental impact and carbon neutrality, regional development, and quality jobs and skills, remain constant priorities for IPAs, with virtually no or little change in their importance between 2021 and 2025. 

What stands out most in 2025 is the emergence of resilience as one of the key IPA objectives, as it has one of the highest mean scores among newly introduced objectives. This is signalling that, while sustainability remains a stable cornerstone of IPA strategies, they are increasingly incorporating resilience into their strategic objectives.

The criteria guiding sectoral prioritisation by IPAs have evolved in ways that echo these broader strategic shifts. Decisions on priority sectors are still largely driven by traditional considerations, such as the capacity to diversify the economy, strengthen domestic capabilities, and maintain international competitiveness. However, new criteria have emerged with notable weight, particularly the potential to reinforce national economic resilience and support sustainability objectives, including carbon neutrality. The rise of these factors reflects a recalibration of investment strategies, as governments and IPAs seek to balance global competitiveness with domestic robustness and long-term sustainability.

The sectors now prioritised closely mirror the criteria shaping IPA decision-making. Healthcare, for instance, is increasingly valued for its capacity to reinforce national resilience, while renewable energy and the circular economy are aligned with the growing emphasis on sustainability and carbon neutrality. Similarly, the prioritisation of technology-intensive sectors such as artificial intelligence, robotics and automation reflects their dual role in driving competitiveness vis-à-vis other economies and in diversifying domestic economic bases. In this sense, sectoral choices are not arbitrary, but a direct expression of the criteria policymakers deem most critical for safeguarding long-term economic stability and global positioning.

IPAs are increasingly placing sustainable investment at the core of their strategy design. This commitment is evident not only in general prioritisation frameworks but also in the widespread adoption of dedicated approaches. Preliminary OECD survey data show that almost three-quarters (73%) of agencies have developed a specific framework for sustainable investment. This highlights that sustainability is no longer a peripheral concern but an integral part of IPA strategy design.

How sustainability is defined also matters. Among the IPAs with a sustainable investment dedicated approach, 81% adopt a broad interpretation, encompassing multiple dimensions of sustainable development. Only a minority (8%) adopt an exclusively environmental lens. To guide their approaches to attracting sustainable investment, more than half of IPAs use international standards such as the SDGs (62%) and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) (58%) criteria.

The IPAs that prioritise sustainable investment rely on a diverse set of criteria to guide their strategies. The most common include the low-carbon transition, environmental sustainability, productivity and innovation, and regional development impact. The chart also shows a clear imbalance: while many agencies adopt a number of criteria to set priorities on sustainable investment, far fewer systematically measure their results. This gap does not signal a lack of interest, but rather shows that only a smaller group of IPAs have advanced far enough to develop robust M&E frameworks for sustainable investment.

The lack of M&E in comparison with prioritisation strategies for sustainable investment shows a critical weakness. Although it ranks among the top stated priorities of IPAs, far fewer agencies measure either the attraction efforts of the agency or the impact of such investments. Twenty-five percent of agencies monitor both the IPA efforts to attract sustainable FDI and its developmental impact. Another 18% limit themselves to the efforts of attracting FDI alone. Strikingly, more than half of agencies (57%) report having no M&E framework for sustainable investments, including 30% who nonetheless have a dedicated approach to prioritising them.

This gap is more than a technical shortcoming. Without robust mechanisms to measure results and developmental outcome, even well-intentioned strategies risk falling short, as agencies cannot refine approaches, or ensure that sustainable investment delivers on its promise. In turn, they struggle to prove the value of their work, the relevance of their mandate, or progress toward national objectives. In the absence of measurement, strategies risk being dismissed as rhetoric or even greenwashing, eroding both accountability and legitimacy in the eyes of policymakers, investors and the public.

For both IPAs with dedicated sustainable investment strategies and those without, the central challenge is methodological: how to accurately measure the impact of sustainable investments. Beyond this shared difficulty, the two groups begin to diverge. Agencies with dedicated approaches tend to emphasise resource constraints, reflecting the demands of implementing more sophisticated frameworks. Those without dedicated approaches, by contrast, report higher levels of difficulty across most areas, with structural barriers – such as limited government support – standing out most clearly. 

Until such methodological questions are addressed, IPAs will struggle to fully align their prioritisation strategies with measurable outcomes. Strengthening M&E capacity is therefore urgent. Robust systems would enable them to demonstrate tangible results, refine their approaches, and secure the political and financial support needed to scale up their efforts. By embedding impact measurement at the heart of their strategies, IPAs can ensure that investment promotion delivers on its promise of resilience, competitiveness and sustainable development.

The evolution of IPA drivers, objectives and measurement practices in 2025 highlights a central theme: expansion rather than substitution. Resilience is being pursued alongside sustainable investment, not in place of it. This layered approach underscores the IPAs’ dual role as both responsive and proactive institutions. They adapt quickly to the investor and market realities while aligning strategies with their government’s broader policy objectives. In doing so, they seek to position FDI as a driver of both immediate stability and long-term sustainable development.

The future of investment promotion will not be about choosing between priorities, but about integrating them more effectively, weaving together sustainability, resilience, digitalisation and sectoral innovation. The challenge now is to translate this expanded agenda into measurable impact – turning ambition into outcomes that deliver value for investors, governments and societies alike.

Through peer learning and shared analytical work, the OECD IPA Network can support agencies in this transition, helping them refine their investment strategies and strengthening M&E mechanisms. In doing so, IPAs can ensure they remain fit for purpose, making national economies more competitive, future-ready, and resilient to shocks in an increasingly uncertain global environment.

For those interested in further analysis of these developments, preliminary insights will be shared on Tuesday, 4 November, during the OECD IPA Network meeting as part of the Sustainable Investment Days. The full results of the survey will be published in the second edition of the Mapping of Investment Promotion Agencies in OECD Countries to be released in 2026. This report will provide a detailed analysis, fresh insights and comprehensive benchmarking on the structures, strategies and practices of IPAs across OECD countries, supporting IPA reform and strategic planning.