This fifth edition of the Benchmark Definition of Foreign Direct Investment has benefitted from the varied and valued inputs from representatives of OECD and non-OECD countries, other international organisations and invited experts. The broad range of perspectives enhanced the discussions, and the information considered during the update and drafting stages.
Specifically, we acknowledge the invaluable contributions of Maria Borga, the Editor of the fifth edition of the Benchmark Definition, Andrew Jowett, Chair of the OECD Working Group on International Investment Statistics (WGIIS), and Francesca Spinelli and Emilie Kothé, from the WGIIS Secretariat, in completing the manual that is now available. We are grateful to the WGIIS Bureau members – John Sheridan, Agne Bikauskaite, Jessica Hanson, Mirco Lattwein, Morten-Bo Paulsen, Eric Simard and Manfred Víquez-Alcázar (some of these members were also lead authors of the notes mentioned below). We also appreciate the support provided by all WGIIS delegates during the update process, which involved many reviews and discussions of notes, chapters, annexes and other material.
We acknowledge the enhanced contribution of the peer reviewers and the lead authors of a series of discussion notes produced by the Benchmark Technical Expert Group (BTEG) on specific topics as part of the revision of the manual: Thiago Said Vieira (Brazil), María Isabel Méndez Ferrada (Chile), Peter Banhegyi and Beata Montvai (Hungary), Silvia Sabatini and Valerio Della Corte (Italy), Sakiko Ohtsuka (Japan), Michal Kupc and Krzysztof Wyroba (Poland), Carlos Figueira (Portugal), Roberto Bardas and Fernando Nieto (Spain), Ricardo Limes (United States), Carmen Picon Aguilar and Fausto Pastoris (European Central Bank), Irene Madsen (Eurostat) and Maria Borga and Topias Leino (International Monetary Fund, IMF). Contributions from all other BTEG members are highly valued too. We are also grateful to Christian Lajule and Roger De Boeck, two FDI statistics experts, for their support during the review and drafting process. We appreciate as well the participation of other colleagues from International Organisations, including the ECB, Eurostat and UNCTAD, and thank in particular several colleagues from the IMF for the close collaboration during the parallel updates of the Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual, Sixth Edition (BPM6) and the Benchmark Definition of Foreign Direct Investment, Fourth Edition (BD4).
Finally, we thank Ana Novik for her guidance, the WGIIS Secretariat for co-ordinating the preparation of the revised Benchmark Definition, Perla Ibarlucea Flores and Laura Kuusela for their great assistance in finalising the publication, and Liv Gudmundson and Lucinda Pearson for preparing the manual for publication.