Incidence of direct foreign investment on hydrocarbons in the Department of Meta

Abstract

This article identifies the incidence of Direct Foreign Investment – DFI, on hydrocarbon projects in Colombia in 2015, from the macroeconomic perspective, at relating the IED to the economic dynamics of the Department of Meta, and from a microeconomic perspective, through a comparison of the institutional performance of projects to IED, and those lacking of such perspective; in this case, Ecopetrol and Pacific Exploration and Production Corporation Pacific&EP were compared, the first one with national investment, and the second one with IED. The type of research is descriptive, and tools to collect information are surveys of institutional performance –SIP, of the National Administrative Department of Statistics –DANE, and a survey applied to Pacific&EP officials. Results show that, in macroeconomic terms the IED meaningfully impacts the Department economy. In microeconomic terms, there is no evidence that IED better contributes to institutional performance than domestic investment. It is possible to conclude that a difference in the institutional performance is not because of investment origin, and it would be convenient to expand on differences by company size, associated to its type of investment. In addition, in design of public policies the citizen participation should be taken into account, in order to learn about social problems, and potentiate the impact of oil activity on the social welfare.