and technological skill levels in the host country, reduces imports and foreign debt payments, and "direct investment by MNES has the potential rapidly to restructure industries at a regional or global level and to transform host economies into prodigious exporters of manufactured goods or services to the world market" (OECD Foreign Direct Investment 8).
Growth of FDI and Share Received by Balkan Countries. According to UNCTAD, in the 1980s and 1990s "FDI . . . has grown at an unprecedented rate . . . world FDI has grown more rapidly than world exports, and sales of foreign affiliates exceed world exports in value," $340 billion in 1996 (6 and 14). Most FDI was invested in the developed world, 58.2 percent in 1997, but, as a percentage of world FDI, the percentage received by the developed world declined about 20 percent between 1983-1988 and 1997 while the share of FDI received by less developed nations (including the Balkans) increased from about one fifth (21.5 percent) to nearly two fifths (37.5 percent) (11 and 61). UNCTAD said "the flows of FDI hav
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