FDI inflows up 1.4% in October

The value of foreign-led investments in factories and other long-term, job-generating projects in the country inched up by 1.4 percent year-on-year to $451 million last October, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported Monday.

The BSP attributed the higher net inflows at the start of the fourth quarter of 2015 to “favorable investor sentiment on the back of the country’s strong macroeconomic fundamentals.”

The net inflows across all FDI components in October helped exceed the $445 million posted in the same month of 2014.

In October, net investments in debt instruments—intercompany borrowing between foreign direct investors and their affiliates/subsidiaries in the country—jumped 71.1 percent year-on-year to $287 million, the BSP said.

As for foreign investments in equity capital, these registered net inflows of $101 million as the equity capital placements worth $109 million outpaced the $8 million in equity capital withdrawals, the BSP added.

The BSP nonetheless noted that the net inflows in equity capital last October went down by 52.5 percent from the $213 million posted a year ago.

Reinvestments of earnings, meanwhile, hit $62 million in October.

The majority of equity capital investments last October mostly came from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States.

The bulk of FDI that month went to the following sectors: Administrative and support service; electricity, gas, steam and air-conditioning supply activities; financial and insurance; manufacturing, and real estate.

At the end of the first 10 months, however, total FDI slid 4.9 percent to $4.99 billion from $5.25 billion during the same period in 2014. This was mainly on account of the 11.6-percent decline in investments in debt instruments to $2.8 billion coupled with the 10.8-percent drop in reinvestment of earnings to $637 million.

End-October net equity capital placements rose 13.9 percent year-on-year to $1.5 billion. Ben O. de Vera