A Study of the Factors Affecting the Absorption of Foreign Direct Investment in Iran Oil Industry

Capital is considered the driving engine of economic growth and development, butdeveloping countries are facing the problem of capital shortage. Not long ago, thesecountries had to make use of foreign borrowing in order to compensate for their shortage ofcapital, but most of them faced problems due to the crises arising from its repayment. Thus,they tried to use foreign direct investment instead of foreign borrowing in order tocompensate for their capital shortage problem and thus achieve the goal of economicgrowth. Our main goal in this research is to investigate the effect of different social-human,financial-economic, and geographical factors on the absorption of foreign direct investmentin Iran Oil Industry (Pars Oil and Gas Company in South Pars). The present research is anapplied research in terms of goal and is a correlational research. Librarian method, openquestionnaire and interview with managers of Iran Oil Industry are the methods used in thisresearch for data collection. The research population includes 150 managers and seniorexperts of South Pars Oil and Gas Company. We have used an open researcher-madequestionnaire to identify the barriers to economic development and a questionnaire withclosed ended questions in order to evaluate the hypothesis among the statistical sampleselected using simple random sampling method. We have also used the two levels ofdescriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation etc.) and inferential statistics (one-sample Ttest)in this research in order to analyze the gathered data. The research findings revealedthat human factors, the political climate dominating the region, the country and even theindustry, GDP, budget, population, geographical and geopolitical location of sourcecountries and the countries of the region are among the factors affecting the absorption offoreign direct investment.

Keywords:

Capital , Investment , Foreign Direct Investment , Industry