About this session
Context and rationale
Foreign capital is recovering, but it is concentrating. UNCTAD's World Investment Report 2026 finds that global FDI rose 6% to $1.6 trillion in 2025, yet developing economies grew only 2%, and the top 20 host economies took more than 80% of the total. Infrastructure was among the sectors that declined, while capital flowed to a small number of AI-related megaprojects. For most emerging markets, the question is no longer how to attract more FDI but how to remain in the narrow group that receives any. The geopolitical events of 2026 and their impact on financial markets have sharpened that question and have repriced risk. Many governments are responding by turning to PPPs.
The thesis to be tested
The session argues that a PPP can anchor foreign investment when the wider environment is uncertain, because it converts diffuse sovereign and political risk into defined, allocated, arbitrable and insurable contractual risk. A merchant investor bets on a country's prospects; a PPP investor bets on a counterparty, a contract and the guarantors behind them. Political risk cover against expropriation, inconvertibility, war and breach of contract attaches far more readily to a defined concession than to diffuse corporate investment. But the panel will also confront the counter-argument – that a contract is only as reliable as the state that signs it.
Guiding questions
- What does a foreign investor actually price when deciding whether to enter a PPP in a market outside the top twenty, and has that calculation changed since February 2026?
- Are PPP units treating force majeure claims, compensation events and change-in-law disputes on their existing contracts this year, and what message does that send to the next investor?
- Which credit enhancements are working now to attract foreign capital?