UNCTAD World Investment Report 2026: "International investment in a turbulent era"

Disposition: stated. Provenance: read from the text of UNCTAD pages and the PDF in search results, 2026-10-11 (not fetched in full).

What: the annual FDI report. Why: it shows the composition of cross-border investment shifting even while volumes hold, which bends the deglobalisation reading on macro-view.

• FDI rose 6% to $1.6T in 2025 after two years of decline. The 2026 Middle East conflict clouds the outlook.
• Five "strategic sectors" (AI infrastructure, semiconductors, energy-transition tech, critical minerals, advanced tech) rose from 16% to 44% of announced greenfield value, 2020-2025 ($109B -> $576B).
• Greenfield manufacturing outside the strategic sectors fell 17% (2015-19 vs 2021-25). In low-income economies, manufacturing investment fell 70%.
• State ownership is rising: 26 of the top 100 non-financial MNEs, up from 15 in 2017. Firms are "redesigning supply chains along regional and geopolitical lines".

URLs: https://unctad.org/publication/world-investment-report-2026-international-investment-turbulent-era ; https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/wir2026_en.pdf (read 2026-10-11)

Backlinks: macro-view, dhl-globalization-tracker-2026, trail-2026-10-11-b