Foreign Direct Investment and Economic Growth in SAARC Countries

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) plays a vital role in economic growth of the countries. The present study analyses the impact of the FDI on economic growth of South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation countries by using the pooled data for the period 1990-2014. Neo-classical production function has been used for analysis and getting stock-to-flow estimation, Taylor series approximation has applied. Fixed Effects Model has been used to investigate the impact of FDI, domestic capital, labour and government expenditures on economic growth. It is the evident from the results that both domestic investment and FDI have been a positive effect on economic growth. The study finds that the contribution of domestic private investment is more trustworthy than the contribution of FDI. Consequently, FDI loses its attraction as an engine of growth if the adverse balance of payment consequence of the resulting profit repatriating is also taken into account. The labour has positive and significant association with GDP. The effect of government expenditure is negligible on economic growth. The findings suggest that growth strategy cannot yield the long term benefits if it neglects investments on human capital.