Question

Multinational managers often represent their companies/countries in international business forums and present concise economic profiles of their countries in order to attract international attention to their respective countries/companies with a view to strengthen the country’s position for foreign investment. There is no standard format in preparing such country profiles but they generally tend to adopt SWOT (Strengths, weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) framework as they often do for company analysis. Some country profiles also engage in PEST (political, economic, sociocultural, and technological) analysis in order to present their countries in a broader framework. No matter what approach they adopt the main objective remains the same-to portray a positive image of the country so as to attract foreign investment.

In this DB topic, you will prepare a concise country profile by adopting the following general guidelines:

• Choose a country of your choice (could be the country of your origin, residence/work experience or high degree of familiarity based on your personal interest or family network)
• You may cover any areas of the economy that you deem fit (depending the choice of the country) but managers usually try to impress by giving robust growth figures, future growth prospects, overall competitiveness, policies (fiscal, monetary, trade, exchange rate and some sectoral policies that are important in today’s knowledge economy and globalized world)
• Challenges/weaknesses are not necessarily “negatives” as there are investors who are prepared to take risks as long as the policies are “right” and there are potentials for commercialization and future profitability

Answer 1