Thesis (MBA (Business Management))--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / ENGLISH SUMMARY: With diminishing sources of capital over the past two decades, developing countries have increasingly regarded the flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) as their main source of capital for development. In response to this, countries have also liberalised their policies, making their investment climate friendlier to FDI. This has been accompanied by increased competition amongst such countries to attract FDI, resulting in higher investment incentive packages offered by host governments to potential investors. This study aims to analyse the significance of host country incentives in attracting FDI, and consider whether or not these generous incentives benefit only the foreign investors, without any positive spillovers and linkages being created within the domestic economy, as this is usually given as the strongest motivation for offering these generous incentives. The research has used case studies of three diverse countries to compare and contrast their approach to incentive policies: • Lesotho, where no incentives are offered specifically to foreign investors • Namibia, with its export processing zones (EPZ) and • South Africa, which offers industry-specific incentives. The analysis is undertaken on aggregate FDI inflows to these three countries for the period 1998 to 2004. These are then compared to other selected countries from Africa. A further analysis of relative performance of FDI to gross fixed capital formation and GDP has also been undertaken for the same period. A separate analysis of the flow of FDI to Namibia four years before and after the introduction of the EPZ regime is also undertaken, and the results are compared with those of Lesotho and South Africa during the same period. It can be concluded that fiscal incentives have not had a significant impact on aggregate FDI inflow into Namibia, but that industry specific incentives such as those used in South Africa have had a much better impact. The results also show that there has been little evidence that FDI has created positive spillovers and linkages in these economies and therefore that the use of generous incentives may have benefited foreign investors more and accrued costs for the host governments. The study has also shown that, despite the absence of essential determinants of FDI in countries such as Angola i.e. adequate infrastructure, economic stability and good governance, FDI in Africa has been mainly resource seeking; concentrated on resource and in particular petroleum rich countries such as Nigeria, Angola and Equatorial Guinea. This form of FDI creates little or no linkages with the rest of the economy and therefore contributes which means that little contribution is being made to the broader development of the economy of the continent.

The problem of low domestic savings is inherent in most Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries. This has motivated most of the SADC countries to institute policies that seek to attract foreign capital to cover the investment deficit that arises from low domestic savings rates. This study gives robust conclusions on the effectiveness of individual tax incentives commonly used by SADC countries in attracting foreign mobile capital. This study has broadened the dimensions research can take in analysing the contribution of tax incentives to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows into developing countries. In separating individual tax incentives mainly used in the SADC region the study gives a robust analysis on the impact of each tax incentive on FDI inflows into SADC countries. The tax incentives used in this study are: tax holidays, corporate income tax (CIT), reduced CIT in specific sectors and losses carried forward. The study also derives data indices for governance, infrastructure and economic policy variables which gives the study clean and reliable data for efficient regression results. These macroeconomic data derivations assist in giving the FDI attraction analysis more variables and well behaved data in drawing conclusions. Through an analysis and comparison of trends in FDI inflows and stock data in different African regions the study draws important conclusions on the impact of the socio-economic environment in FDI attraction. The study, in consultation with data from the period 2004 to 2013 separates the SADC countries into four panels based on resource richness. Panel 1 includes the resources-rich countries, Panel 2 the resources-poor countries, Panel 3 all SADC countries, except South Africa and Panel 4 all the SADC countries. Each of the estimate models in this study, use individual tax incentives variables to avoid the effects of collinearity between different tax incentives variables and to improve the predictive power of the panel data models. This study derived tax incentives data for individual SADC countries, from Ernst and Young’s worldwide tax data. Regular tax incentives in the SADC are derived from tax holidays, corporate income tax (CIT); losses carried forward and reduced CIT in specific sectors. This study seeks to achieve two major objectives: firstly, to establish the effectiveness of tax incentives in attracting FDI inflows into SADC countries, and, secondly, to establish other variables that influence FDI inflows into SADC countries. The study estimated four panels for SADC countries, separated according to resource richness. This was done because different types of FDI are dependent on the available resources in developing countries and thus factors that influence the FDI inflows differ according to resource richness. Resource-seeking FDI moves to resources-rich economies, market-seeking FDI goes to economies that have access to larger markets and efficiency-seeking and strategic-asset-seeking FDI move to economies that ensure efficient use of their capital resources. Thus, as expected, factors that attract FDI to countries in the separate panels differ in direction of causality and magnitude of impact. The study adopts a system Generalised Method of Moments (SYS GMM) methodology to address the problem of endogeneity associated with dynamic panel data models. The estimated results established that tax holidays positively explain FDI inflows in Panel 2. CIT was found to negatively affect FDI inflows into all SADC countries despite their particular category of resource-richness. Losses carried forward are insignificant in all panels and reduced CIT in specific sectors negatively influences FDI inflows in Panel 1 and surprisingly positively influences FDI inflows in Panel 2. The lagged FDI variable shows a positive relationship with current year FDI inflows. The governance index is significant and positively affects FDI inflows in panels 1, 3 and 4. Panel 2 shows a negative relationship between governance and FDI inflows. Market potential measured by GDP growth rate is insignificantly different from zero in all the four panels in the study and negatively signed, except in models A and C of Panel 2. The stock of infrastructure is significant and negatively signed in all the panels. The log natural resources variable though insignificant in some models, mainly, exhibit a significant and negative effect in most models of the study’s panel estimations. The trade openness variable is positively related to FDI inflows in Panel 1. Panel 2 show negative effects of trade openness to FDI inflows. Financial globalisation significantly impacts positive FDI inflows in all the four panels. The economic policy variable is insignificant in all the four panels of the study, except, in model B of Panel 1 where it is weakly significant at 10% level and negatively signed. The study concludes that tax incentives are important in FDI attraction in the SADC countries; therefore, an effective tax mix that ensures efficient use of tax incentives is important to ensure sustainable FDI inflows into the region. Good governance is important in the region for FDI inflows to increase. Increasing government rents from natural resources reduces FDI inflows in the SADC. Previous year flows of FDI are positively related to current year inflows, thus consistent FDI attraction policies in the SADC are important. Infrastructure in the SADC should be consistently improved to ensure suitability with the dynamic nature of foreign investment. Financial markets should be developed to ensure effective flow of capital and growth in economies through more investment. / Economics / D. Com.. (Economics)