In the context of the EU-OECD Programme in the Mediterranean, the 2-day Regional Seminar on Investment for Sustainable Development in the MENA Region took place at the OECD Regional Centre in Istanbul.

The Programme aims to support investment climate reforms to advance sustainable growth and decent job creation in the Southern Neighbourhood. More specifically, it provides targeted policy advice and capacity building on investment design and implementation; facilitates public-private dialogues on investment climate reforms in priority sectors; and supports monitoring and evaluation reforms to gauge success.

The Seminar was characterised by fruitful discussions and enriching exchanges amon experts the different Partner Countries’ and private sector representatives. In particular, the seminar aim was twofold:

• To share experience on priorities reforms to attract and retain sustainable investment, with a focus on improving the impact of FDI on job quality and skills development, as well as to make participants familiar with OECD FDI Qualities Indicators and Policy Toolkit and to leverage recent and ongoing work with several MENA economies on FDI Qualities to provide examples of reform priorities.
• To explore how investment incentives can support policy goals in the Southern Neighbourhood region. Specifically, how governments should design and use incentives compared to peers, the potential impact of the global minimum tax on tax incentive, how greater transparency on incentives can facilitate investment and support policy evaluation, and how incentives could be designed to support specific policy goals such as job creation and skills development.

Within the Seminar, the 2^nd Advisory Group Meeting which gathers annually to take stock of the state of the progress on the Programme took place during the first day. The meeting provided the presentation of the main activities conducted during the past year, including a dedicated session for the Result Oriented Monitoring (ROM) review debriefing, and what will be done in the next year of implementation. The meeting generated a lot of constructive reactions both from policy makers and private sector representatives.