In a bid to facilitate foreign direct investment, 12 developing nations signed 22 bilateral investment pacts during a fortnight of negotiations that wrapped up Friday in Sapporo under the auspices of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
"We are happy to see that it is actually very successful beyond our expectation," Karl Sauvant, officer-in-charge of UNCTAD's Division on Investment, Technology and Enterprise Development, said in Tokyo on Thursday, ahead of Friday's closing of the Sapporo session.
The session was the first time that UNCTAD has sponsored such intensive negotiations.