The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) declares ‘Invest India’ as the winner of the 2020 United Nations Investment Promotion Award in a ceremony at its headquarters in Geneva.

United Nations Investment Promotion Award recognizes and celebrates the outstanding achievements of the world’s best-practice investment promotion agencies. The evaluation was based on UNCTAD’s assessment of work undertaken by 180 national investment promotion agencies across the world.

The challenges created by the pandemic for investment promotion agencies (IPAs) forced them to shift focus from routine investment promotion and facilitation towards crisis management, notification of government emergency and economic relief measures, provision of crisis support services, and contribution to national COVID-19 business response efforts.

In March, UNCTAD constituted a team to monitor IPAs response to the pandemic. It reported best practices from investment promotion agencies in the IPA Observer publications in April and July. IPAs response to the pandemic became the basis for the evaluation of the 2020 United Nations Investment Promotion Award.

UNCTAD highlighted the good practices followed by ‘Invest India’ such as Business Immunity Platform, Exclusive Investment Forum webinar series, social media engagement and focus COVID response teams created as a response to the pandemic in its publications.