The present study was prepared in the third quarter of 1999 as a background study to a Conference organised by the OECD Committee on International Investment and Multinational Enterprises (CIME), in collaboration with the Centre for Co-operation with Non-Members and with the support of the Estonian Investment Agency, on the subject of “Foreign Direct Investment Policy and Private Sector Development in the Baltic States”. This event took place in Tallinn on 17 November 1999. Its objective was to provide an overall assessment of the contribution of foreign direct investment (FDI) to the economic transformation of the three Baltic states since their independence in 1991-1992.

The conference was one of the main activities organised in 1999 under the auspices of the OECD Baltic Regional Programme. Within the framework of the same programme, it was followed up by a Conference on Fiscal Incentives and Competition for Foreign Direct Investment in Vilnius in Spring 2000 organised in ...