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Special Economic Zones : Progress, Emerging Challenges, and Future DirectionsAsk three people to describe a special economic zone (SEZ) and three very different images may emerge. The first person may describe a fenced-in industrial estate in a developing country, populated by footloose multinational corporations (MNCs) enjoying tax breaks, with laborers in garment factories working in substandard conditions. In contrast, the second person may recount the 'miracle of Shenzhen,' a fishing village transformed into a cosmopolitan city of 14 million, with per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growing 100-fold, in the 30 years since it was designated as an SEZ. A third person may think about places like Dubai or Singapore, whose ports serve as the basis for wide range of trade- and logistics-oriented activities. In this book, the author use SEZ as a generic expression to describe the broad range of modern economic zones discussed in this book. But we are most concerned with two specific forms of those zones: (1) the export processing zones (EPZs) or free zones, which focus on manufacturing for export; and (2) the large-scale SEZs, which usually combine residential and multiuse commercial and industrial activity. The former represents a traditional model used widely throughout the developing world for almost four decades. The latter represents a more recent form of economic zone, originating in the 1980s in China and gaining in popularity in recent years. Although these models need not be mutually exclusive (many SEZs include EPZ industrial parks within them), they are sufficiently different in their objectives, investment requirements, and approach to require a distinction in this book.
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Special Economic Zones : Progress,
 Emerging Challenges, and Future DirectionsAsk three people to describe a special
 economic zone (SEZ) and three very different images may
 emerge. The first person may describe a fenced-in industrial
 estate in a developing country, populated by footloose
 multinational corporations (MNCs) enjoying tax breaks, with
 laborers in garment factories working in substandard
 conditions. In contrast, the second person may recount the
 'miracle of Shenzhen,' a fishing village
 transformed into a cosmopolitan city of 14 million, with per
 capita gross domestic product (GDP) growing 100-fold, in the
 30 years since it was designated as an SEZ. A third person
 may think about places like Dubai or Singapore, whose ports
 serve as the basis for wide range of trade- and
 logistics-oriented activities. In this book, the author use
 SEZ as a generic expression to describe the broad range of
 modern economic zones discussed in this book. But we are
 most concerned with two specific forms of those zones: (1)
 the export processing zones (EPZs) or free zones, which
 focus on manufacturing for export; and (2) the large-scale
 SEZs, which usually combine residential and multiuse
 commercial and industrial activity. The former represents a
 traditional model used widely throughout the developing
 world for almost four decades. The latter represents a more
 recent form of economic zone, originating in the 1980s in
 China and gaining in popularity in recent years. Although
 these models need not be mutually exclusive (many SEZs
 include EPZ industrial parks within them), they are
 sufficiently different in their objectives, investment
 requirements, and approach to require a distinction in this book.
-
Trade, Investment and Development in the Middle East and North Africa : Engaging with the WorldThe book describes why expanding trade,
 and investment is vital for the Middle East and North Africa
 region. The greatest economic challenge is to create enough
 jobs for its rapidly growing labor force, which is
 increasingly young, and educated, to ward off threats to
 social, and political stability, inherent in high
 unemployment rates. This effort requires higher, and more
 sustainable, economic growth than has been achieved in the
 past two decades. Expanding trade, and private investment
 offers the best hope. The potential is enormous, given the
 region's human resources, skills, location, and
 opportunities. The book also analyzes why the region has yet
 to tap fully into the rich stream of global commerce, and
 investment - and the measures needed to do so, including
 improvements in the domestic investment climate, and reforms
 in the policies of the region's trading partners.