Foreign Direct Investment and Economic Growth : Evidence from Bangladesh

This paper examines the relationship between foreign direct investments and economic growth of Bangladesh during the period 1972–2011. After reviewing the literature on the factors affecting the growth of the economy of the country, the paper empirically evaluates the most significant factors that may influence the growth of the economy of Bangladesh during the period of 1972–2011. This study evaluates the association between FDI and economic growth using multiple regression method by considering relationship between real gross domestic product, foreign direct investment, domestic investment and openness of the trade policy regime. The results indicate that domestic investments exert positive influence on economic growth whereas foreign direct investments, openness of trade are less significant.


Introduction
In the context of the new theory of economic growth, FDI is considered as an engine of growth of mainstream economics and accounts for more than half of the private capital flows between countries in the world (Thilakaweera, 2011).FDI definition will be followed in accordance with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), 'investment that is made to acquire lasting interest in an enterprise operating in an economy other than that of the investor, the investor's purpose being to have an effective voice in the management of the enterprise'.The same definition followed by United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in its World Investment Report (2006) and Bangladesh Board of Investment (2004).Economics has the power to change the global world.Bangladesh needs economic development to survive in this world.There are varieties of components which can boost up the economy of a country.Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is a well-known factor in the case of economic growth.After fulfilling all the basic needs, Bangladesh is unable to gather enough domestic savings to invest in lucrative projects as it is an under-developed country.In response to this, FDI is used to be one of the major components for the economic growth of Bangladesh.Shaari, Hong and Shukeri (2012), Hetes, Moldovan and Miru (2009), Z. K. Kang (2010) confirms that FDI can enhance economic growth.FDI in any country not only represent the investment of the foreign nation but it also transfers the better and current technological innovations, enhanced human resource and administrative ideas, well trained labor force and management skill.However, Ludosean (2012) and Athukorala (2004) found that FDI is not the initiative of economic growth.FDI leads to international trade and economic growth (Oladipo, 2010).My research question is FDI is not only limited to transfer or foreign money but also works for growth of an economy.My research also focuses on how FDI influenced through economic factors and how FDI revenue can change export revenue from the perspective of Bangladesh.FDI has the potential to enhance the economic growth of developing countries.It is really hard for Bangladesh to accumulate sufficient domestic savings after meeting all the basic needs of the country.Therefore, FDI is truly important for such a least developed country like Bangladesh.Bangladesh became an independent country in the year 1971 and it has been supported by the International Development Association (IDA) as IDA provided more than US$16 billion support for policy reforms and investment projects since 1972.According to World Bank, IDA used to be one of the major foreign aid providers of Bangladesh.Therefore, study on FDI and economic growth is timely important and it will definitely give some inputs to identify the magnitude of relationship between FDI and economic growth in Bangladesh while evaluating the impact of policy measures adopted by the government of Bangladesh thus far to attract FDI.

Literature Review
FDI became an important issue nationally and internationally these days.J. Dunning, S. Hymer and R. Vernon are undoubtedly the world's leading scholars who worked a lot on the subject of multinational corporations and international business and they mainly focuses on FDI, which is an important element of economic development in all countries, especially in the developing ones.Though it has been observed from a few empirical studies that the effects of FDI are complex considering economic development, FDI would transfer new technology, increases managerial skills, know how, expand productivity, international production network, creates linkages to foreign markets and reduces unemployment.These are the positive effects on economy for which many countries get attracted to these and invest in FDI, Caves (1996).
In the perspective from a traditional macroeconomic point of view, FDI flows from the country of origin to host countries focusing on the capital flow and collection of revenue from the investments.On the other hand the microeconomic view of FDI is not limited to transfer of capital but it also looks into the motivation of investment across the country of origin, the intention of investors for investing rather than the flow of investment and stock (Lipsey, 2002).It has been also observed from the perspective of macroeconomics that FDI generates employment opportunities, increases production, builds competition among local businesses and achieves benefit through new technological knowledge and innovative ability of other firms and countries, Denisia, V. (2010).However, FDI means higher exports, replacement of bank loan, connection to foreign markets and foreign currencies in the case of developing countries.
The most important way to look at FDI is through Dunning's Eclectic Framework or OLI (Dunning, 1993a) where OLI refers to Ownership advantages, Location advantages and Internalisation advantages.Dunning explained that a country of origin should have ownership advantages over the host country and also extended the concept by emphasizing on the issue of getting more benefits by applying these OAs in suitable location where it will be produced in a more efficient manner.
After the Second World War FDI became important phenomenon in the international economy.The core objective of FDI drives a firm to invest the projects abroad rather than export.A number of researchers explained FDI from their own point of view which is the outcome of their research and all those new outcomes added some new theories to the previous one.
The relationship between FDI and economic growth has been studied by many researchers all over the world so far.Even though the topic of FDI and economic growth is general, but the relationship between FDI and economic growth is reasonably important for less developed countries.There are many different economists who applied verities of approaches to identify the relationship between FDI and GDP in different nations in the global world.Authors have made conclusions consistently with each other, but conclusions of others are not the same even contradictory.FDI and economic growth has been studied quite extensively mainly based on developing economies in the recent literature of studies and outputs of the studies recorded mix results.Some of the studies examined the impact of FDI on economic growth and found that FDI has positive and significant impact on economic growth in the host country with time lag.Shaari, Hong and Shukeri (2012) reveal that FDI and real gross domestic product (GDP) in Malaysia have positive relationship and also found that FDI has given significant impact on Malaysian economic growth while Hetes, Moldovan and Miru (2009) also showed that FDI has positive impact on economic growth in the Central and Eastern European countries.
From the perspective of Vietnam, Nguyen (2006) came up with the summary that both FDI and economic growth are supportive to each other and this is how they have two way linkages in between them.During 1996-2005, FDI has direct and positive effects on GDP in Vietnam and it has been also observed by the author that larger economic growth would had been possible in Vietnam if they had invested more resources in the development of financial markets, enhancement of training and education and minimizing the technology gap between vietnam and foreign firms.P. Srinivasan, M. Kalaivani and P. Ibrahim, (2010) agreed to Nguyen and concluded that there is a bidirectional relationship between FDI and GDP in Vietnam.On the other hand Z. K. Kang (2010) came up with the same conclusion of bidirectional relationship and positive link between FDI and economic growth from the perspective of Cameroon during the period of 1980-2009.Moreover, he also added here that domestic investments are less important compare to external remittances particularly in Cameroon.
Market demand, quantity of firms in the market, initial cost to set up any plant, marginal cost of a firm and FDI policy of the particular host country facts are some major facts on which the foreign firm's investment depend on whether they should enter the host country or not (Qiu & Wang, 2011).Generally, Greenfield investment is not attractive as the initial cost for setting up the plant is very high; however, brownfield or cross-border merger is more likely to be chosen in the case of low marginal cost of domestic firms.Jenkins andThomas (2002) andWorld Bank (2000) pointed out that many scholars have their full faith on FDI because they believe that FDI has the power to develop human capital, knowledge of new technology, create new job opportunity, facilitate foreign trade, and increase domestic investment and tax revenue.These are some major changes which could be possible in any country because of FDI inflow and these changes could bring employment growth, economic development and ultimately poverty could be reduced.However, Mayne (1997) describes that the impact of FDI on poverty depend on some other factors.These are institutions, policies, economic environment, labor market quality and investment pattern of the host country.
A study done by Samad (2009) examined the relationship between FDI and economic growth of nineteen developing countries of South-East Asia and Latin America and his result shows that Latin American countries had a long run and short run relationships between GDP and FDI while one country that was Sri Lanka in the East and South East Asia also indicated long run relationship.Besides that, there was bidirectional relationship in East and South East Asian countries.Meanwhile, Balamurali and Bogahawatte (2004) examined the relationship between FDI and economic growth in Sri Lanka.Ludosean (2012) provide evidence that the FDI does not initiate economic growth and that economic growth is an important factor in terms of attracting FDI in Romania.
However, findings of number of studies on FDI and economic growth also show that there is no significant relationship between FDI and economic growth.Study engaged by Athukorala (2004) illustrate that the regression analyses do not provide support for the view of a relationship between FDI and economic growth in Sri Lanka.Ousseini, Hu and Aboubacar (2011) found that FDI as compared with Domestic investment do not have significant impact to the economic growth in Niger and domestic investment only has positive impact on economic growth.
From the context of the neoclassical models, Solow (1956) pointed out that there is no other effective channel like FDI that can transfer the knowledge of new technology and develop growth of a country.According to the law of diminishing marginal return, the impact of FDI on growth rate of output reduces for an extra input of labor.Therefore, N. Balamurali and C. Bogahawatte (2004) described that the level of output resulted through FDI but not the growth rate.FDI has been seen as an effective channel to transfer technology and foster growth in developing countries within the framework of the neoclassical models (Solow, 1956).The impact of FDI on growth rate of output was constrained by the existence of diminishing returns of physical capital.Therefore, N. Balamurali and C. Bogahawatte (2004) noticed that the level of output is the outcome of FDI investment and it is difficult to change the growth of output in the long run.However, modern theory of economic growth viewed FDI as an engine of growth.After doing a range of studies the World Bank (2002) declares FDI as the most important tool that can stimulate the economic development of the foreign country by improving the productivity and export revenue of the foreign country.However, the behavior and the relationship are not same between foreign multinational companies and their host countries as different country has different strategies and policies in their own country.
According to Neo-classical growth model, there is a tendency to get higher productive return and higher growth rate if proper amount of capital has been invested by the developed countries to the less developed countries as under developed economies do not have sufficient capital stock.In other words, long term investment like FDI can make available higher productive growth in the economy where capital stock is limited but for the short term period.However, this higher productive growth can influence the whole economy of that particular country for the long term period.From the perspective of the new endogenous growth theory, Romer (1986) proposed that FDI has the power to increase growth efficiency that can bring comparative advantages in the less developed economies and ultimately helps the poor economy to catch-up rich economy in the long-run.
FDI inflow plays major role on capital enhancement and other spillover effects on skill development, technological progress, efficient usage of utilities and green innovations, industrialization, trade and government investment in Bangladeshi.Todaro and Smith (2003), Hayami (2001) argues that FDI might fill the gap between investment and domestically mobilized savings as they believe that improvement of management, technology, labor skills in host countries and increased tax revenues are the results of FDI flow.Hayami (2001) also added that FDI sometimes helps a country to come out from crucial situation of underdevelopment.
Looking at two most popular developing countries China and India, Zafar, Imran and Ramzan (2013) considered FDI as an important tool to market growth.United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (2005) and UNCTAD ( 2006) pointed out that FDI is an important element that can bring globalization to host economies by transferring know-how, upgrading technology and managing skills exchange.Adhikary (2011) emphasized on strong unidirectional long-term causal flow which has been recorded from the changes of FDI, trade openness and capital formation to foster the growth of GDP.In response to this, he investigated the linkage between FDI, trade openness, capital formation, and economic growth rates empirically in the context of Bangladesh where time series data gleaned based on the time period of 1986-2008 and a strong long-run linkage found among the variables.FDI receives more attention from all over the world from the last two decades and plays a positive role in the process of economic growth.According to Thomas et al. (2008) foreign multinational corporations became popular by developing new products and technologies faster compare to local firms, and thus competition increases among local firms to make similar products like multinationals as well as innovative products.Therefore, Zafar, Imran and Ramzan (2013) found this as the main reason of why the developing countries are trying to attract more FDI.Zafar, Imran and Ramzan (2013) observed that increased number of new jobs, improved income level, high growth of GDP and ultimately high quality living standards are the outcome of proper utilization of FDI in respect to developing countries.Therefore, all policymakers agreed on one point that FDI imposes positive impact on productivity of host countries.Moreover, FDI can reform a national economy and promote economic development.Blomstrom (1994) observed that effectiveness increases among local firms in Mexico and Indonesia.On the other hand, Smarzynska (2002) concluded that FDI spillovers through backward linkages resulted higher impact on local firms compare to multinational firms in Lithuania.Borensztein (1998) and Findlay (1978) concentrated on economic development, technological improvements of less-developed countries which are the results of FDI investments.Hanson (2001) explained a few positive sides of FDI whereas Greenwood (2002) came up with negative effects of FDI that it may crowd out local firms that hampers the developments of economy.Lipsey (2002) came up with a very good conclusion that there is no consistent relationship between FDI stock and economic growth though there are positive effects that depend on the nature of the investment sector where the FDI invested.
Finally, FDI channels much needed capital for investment and provides support to capital formation; trade openness facilitates the flows of international capital and redirects factor endowments to more productive sectors; a high level of capital formation ensures needed finance for the industries growth and development; and all of them jointly promote economic growth at large.From this perspective, the linkage between FDI, trade openness, and economic growth ought to be positive.Not only this, this nexus should be co-integrated in the long-run.However, a question arises whether this nexus works equally for all developing countries, particularly in Bangladesh.

Source of Data
The research is based on regression analysis and graphical representation with the help of economic data to show economic progress.The data was collected from a range of different journals and articles and some data taken from different publications.Dynamic annual time series data from 1972 to 2011 has been used for this study from the website of World Bank.Annual Report of Central Bank of Bangladesh, monthly bulletin and Economics and Socio Statistics publications of the Central Bank of Bangladesh.
i. Annual FDI data: taken from World Bank, FDI data converted from current prices to constant 2000 U. S. dollars ii. Economic Growth: As measured by GDP from World Bank iii.Export revenue: Source from World Bank

Data Analysis Model
The relationship between FDI and economic growth undertakes to set as FDI provides a substantial support to economic growth.Assuming a production function of Y= f (FDI, K, L) where Y represents aggregate real output, K is the capital stock, L is the labor force and the FDI represents the amount of foreign Direct Investment.Policy reforms and trade liberalization has a major impact on economic growth of any country.Manni and Afzal, (2012) concludes that trade liberalization policy improves the export of Bangladesh which ultimately advances the economic growth mostly from 1990.In this study openness of trade used as an independent variable where it adds export and import and shows how economic growth changes because of liberalized trade.Because of unavailable data of capital stock, most of the studies, (Barro, 1999) took the ratio of gross fixed domestic investment to GDP as an alternative variable in the place of capital stock (K).As the interest of this study is to measure the FDI impact on the economic growth, therefore, nationally owned investment taken as another dependent variable.Here, nationally owned investment used as domestic investment (DOMINV) which is an alternative to K where DOMINV is the gross fixed domestic investment minus net FDI inflows.According to Athukorala (2003), the dependent variable (L) dropped from the regression equation based on the concept of Bangladesh is a labor surplus economy.
According to Athukorala (2003); Balamurali and Bogahawatte (2004), estimating multiple linear regression equation used in this study is: Model: 1 However, as the major concentration in this study is economic growth, therefore, the study extends its analysis through the two more following regression equations.Here equation ( 2) differs from equation (1) by taking ΔGDP which is equal to (GDP(t) -GDP(t-1)) / GDP(t-1).
From an economic perspective, FDI, domestic investment and openness of trade may not immediately affect growth of an economy.Instead, the lagging effect on economic growth may be more reasonable since economic growth changes its behavior after a period the change of FDI inflow, effects of free trade and changes in domestic investments.Hence, it is reasonable to add consideration of lags of FDI, DOMINV and OPEN in the model.
All the data of FDI, GDP, Exports, Imports, Domestic Investments, and Inflation are collected from the data bank of World Bank.Here, the data of FDI was found in current U. S. dollars and converted to constant 200 U. S. dollars after calculating the GDP deflator where base year is 2000.
To estimate the regression, the study focuses on the data of FDI, exports, imports, and gross domestic investment where gross domestic investment is constraint by the value of depreciation.Net domestic investment is actually gross domestic investment minus depreciation; therefore, by taking into our calculation the gross fixed domestic investments, the study is ignoring the depreciated value of the domestic investment each year.Another limitation found in this study is, the regression model is unable to express its result in the log-linear ( lnY = β 0 + β 1 X ) form which expresses an increase of one unit of X is associated with a 100 × β 1 % increase in Y.However, expression of regression in log-linear form is only applicable when all the observations in the data set are positive and here in this study, it is constrained by the negative value of some FDI data.Therefore, the study continued its regression model based on the linear-linear (Y = β 0 + β 1 X) form which expresses an increase of one unit of X is associated with an increase of β 1 units of Y. Rodriguez (1996) and Rodrik (1999) observed strong and positive relation between openness and economic growth.Kraay and David Dollar (2001) provides evidence on trade liberalization, growth and poverty reduction by concluding with the findings that rapid development took place in one third of the under-developed countries of the world.Dollar, 2001).Islam (1992) observed high economic growth in Bangladesh due to the effect of domestic resources compare to foreign resources concentrating on the period of 1972-1988.

Findings from Graphs
To assist private investment, Bangladesh government introduced 'Board of Investment' in 1989 by focusing domestic and foreign sources.The government also reduced the restriction on capital and profit which comes from foreign countries and opened up almost all industrial sectors for foreign investors so that their investment with local partners can increase.According to Billah (2012) a huge amount of foreign exchange flows out from the country every year as Bangladesh has some shortcomings in its policy.
In Bangladesh, during the time periods of relative economic and political stability, Foreign Direct Investment inflows have responded positively in the periods of 2000-2011.
Looking at the FDI history, volume of FDI is low in Bangladesh even though the country has been identified by global institutions as a highly attractive investment destination and wide-ranging incentives received from foreign investors.Change in GDP(%)

Years
Change in GDP (%) Figure 2. Foreign direct investment year by year Bangladesh received FDI 0.09 million U. S dollars just after the 1 year of its independence.After that inflow of FDI fluctuated a lot till 1979.FDI played a minor role in the economy of Bangladesh until 1980.Looking at the above graph, it seems that inflow of FDI was very inconsistent until 1980.Nevertheless, in the year 1980 inflow of FDI increased a bit and it was quite consistent till 1995.Moreover it seems from the graph Figure 2 that the inflow of FDI was in increasing mode from the year 1996 to year 2000 but then it dropped a bit, however, the scenario changes with the dramatic increment of FDI in the year 2003.Though substantial improvement seen in the year 2005, however, inflow of FDI dropped a bit again in the period of 2006-2007, but then again extensive improvement was seen in the year 2008 compare to the period of 2009-2011 where the year 2009 effected by the world recession.Eventually, it is a fact that inflow of FDI is gradually increasing in Bangladesh after the year 1980.
Openness of trade can bring progressive economic growth resulted from positive effect of exports, imports, FDI and remittance.Open trade regime is a great support for the market to operate in a better way as most of the empirical evidence proved positive effects of liberalization on economic growth (Dollar, 1992;Frankel & Romer, 1999;Dollar & Kaaray, 2001;Bhagwati & Srinivasan, 2001;Wacziarg, 1998).
Figure   Vol The above table is the summary of all the four models of regression estimation.The coefficient of each independent variable expresses how much dependent variable changes for a change of one independent variable by holding other independent variables constant.

Summary of Models
Model 1 is ignoring the growth of GDP in their regression estimation and model 2 is ignoring lagged variables.
As the effect of a previous value of the lagged variable is important in understanding the outcome of current period, hence, this study estimated model 4 to see the lagging effect of the same variable on the GDP growth.It is likely that model 4 is better in comparison of other models.In an economic point of view, it is reasonable to consider the previous DOMINV, FDI and OPEN behavior of an economy because they may influence the growth of GDP, besides the influence from the current values of the same variables.
The study extended its investigation by adding current and lagged values of FDI, DOMINV and OPEN to Model 4, therefore tried to reveal whether lagged variable effects more or not compare to current prices of the same variable.According to the results from the estimations, the DOMINV is insignificant as the P-value is more than 10 % significance level.However, coefficient looks better in FDI, DOMINV and OPEN rather than lagged FDI, lagged DOMINV and lagged OPEN.
F-statistics is the measurement which determines whether a range of independent variables are jointly influence dependent variables or not.In this study, the good news is, in all the models, the Prob.(F-statistic) is 0.0000, which is smaller than 0.01, means all the independent variables of each model are jointly influencing the dependent variable of GDP in model 1 and growth in GDP in other models.
According to statistics, the null hypothesis refers to a general or default position that there is no relationship between two measured phenomena.Therefore, rejecting or disproving the null hypothesis means that there is a significant relationship between the two phenomena.In this study, P-values of DOMINV are less than 0.10 in all the models whereas the value is less than 0.05 in model 3 and 4, meaning that the null hypothesis is rejected and relationship is significant.However, P-values of OPEN and FDI are more than 0.10 in all the models, therefore the null hypothesis is not rejected and thus relationship is insignificant among GDP growth, FDI and openness of trade.So relation between GDP growth and domestic investment is significant whereas relation among FDI, OPEN and GDP growth is not significant.

Concluding Remarks
If we look back to the literature review of this study, it is quite clear that there is a range of arguments about the statement of FDI can bring up economic growth or not.Positive association between FDI and GDP growth where FDI can enhance economic growth has been investigated after doing a range of studies by Shaari, Hong and Shukeri (2012), Hetes, Moldovan and Miru (2009), Z. K. Kang (2010).After investigating the relationship between FDI and economic growth, Nguyen ( 2006) found positive result in Vietnam and Balamurali and Bogahawatte (2004) found the association positive in Sri Lanka.After doing research on China and India, I. Zafar, M. Imran and M. Ramzan (2013) considered FDI as an important factor for growth.Borensztein (1998) and Findlay (1978) explored technological improvements and economic enhancement of less-developed countries which are the results of FDI investments.Hanson (2001) explained a few positive sides of FDI.
According to Ahamad and Tanin (2010), gradually increased FDI in recent years has had positive influence on the economic progress of Bangladesh.
This study investigates the linkage between FDI, domestic investment, openness of trade and economic growth from the perspective of Bangladesh followed by the time series data from 1972-2011 time periods.In this study, the significance of lagged response variables followed by F-statistics reveals that the independent variables are jointly significant as the P-values are less than 0.01 in all those models.It has been also explored by the study that domestic investment is more significant compare to other two independent variables and domestic investment has positive effect to foster the economic growth of Bangladesh.This study results also support the study of Adhikary (2011) where he examined the relationship among growth of real GDP, volume of FDI, level of capital formation, and therefore revealed significant positive effects from the perspective of Bangladesh.
In this study, P-value represents the domestic investment (DOMINV) is significant as the P-value is low in all those models.On the other hand, FDI and Openness of trade (OPEN) showed insignificance with high P-value.The reason could be the robust import compare to export in Bangladesh, henceforth openness of trade policy might not be an effective one.FDI is promoting the growth of GDP but this is again not true for Bangladesh as the P-value showing the level of insignificance level with high P-value.So, it is clear that FDI possess less relation to boost up GDP to grow.Changes in FDI inflows can change economic growth is not ascertained in this study.However, the other way round could be that, the growth of GDP could be the reason for increasing value of FDI rather than FDI promotes GDP.However, Ahamad and Tanin (2010) investigated the relationship between FDI and GDP empirically in the context of Bangladesh by analyzing time series data of 1970-2006 and therefore revealed economic growth attracted FDI inflow instead FDI generates economic growth.The same sort of point agreed by Ghali & Al-Mutawa (1999), Levine and Renelt (1992), and Barro (1991), Adhikary and Mengistu (2008) that domestic investment can raise economic growth and FDI as well.In response to this, Raihan (2011) explored that Bangladesh GDP growth in recent years resulted mostly because of improvement of domestic investments.In this study, the low P-value of all the models are also represents significance between domestic investment (DOMINV) and GDP growth.
Theoretically it is true that trade openness and economic growth should possess a positive association but the study of Levine and Renelt (1992), and Krugman (1994) traced insignificant or negative relationship between them.The same sort of result found by Adhikary (2011) and there he revealed reasons behind the negative association between the trade openness and economic growth rates in Bangladesh.He pointed out exchange rate depreciation, large volume of imported materials and negative trade balance position are major reasons behind this negative relationship.In this study, robust import has been found in Figure 4 compare to export in Bangladesh since 1972.In this study, the P values of openness to trade are more than 0.10 in all those models; therefore, the openness to trade and economic growth are insignificant.Therefore, export revenue can change because of change in FDI inflows has not been ascertained.
Finally, international finance and neoclassical growth theory says, there is a positive relationship between the rate of economic growth and the rate of capital formation and also revealed by the study of Kormendi & Meguire (1985), Barro (1991), Levine & Renalt (1992).In response to this, Bangladesh is one of them that they are utilizing domestic investment more effectively for economic development and attract FDI as well.

Consequences of Model 1 to 4
Model 1.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Percentage change in GDP year by year Figure 4. C

Table 1 .
independent variables to see the impact of independent variables on dependent variable.From the perspective of Bangladesh, in this paper, we concentrate to trace the relationship between FDI, trade openness, capital formation, and economic growth over a period of 1972-2011.In doing so, we consider changes in real GDP as an indicator of economic growth.FDI is standardized by GDP to remove the problem associated with absolute measurement.Time series data from the period of 1972-2011 have been collected from World Development Indicators published by World Bank.E-VIES 7.0 software was used to run multiple regression analyses.All the models estimated multiple linear-linear regression employing the relationship among GDP, FDI, DOMINV and OPEN.Here GDP is Gross Domestic Products, FDI is Foreign Direct Investments, DOMINV is gross capital formation/gross domestic investments and OPEN is the combination of exports and imports.All the values are in constant prices based on 2000 U. S. dollar.Summary of regression