Global FDI dips 41pc in Jan-Jun
BD receives higher inflow in final count
Asjadul Kibria | Tuesday, 16 October 2018
The inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) globally declined sharply in the first half of the current calendar year.
The amount is estimated at $470 billion in the January-June period of 2018 while it was $794 billion during the same period of 2017.
Investment Trend Monitor, released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) on Monday, revealed this declining trend in the global FDI.
The sharp decline is attributed to the large repatriation of multinational entities based in the United States.
Against this backdrop, the net FDI inflow in Bangladesh jumped by around 44 per cent in the first half of 2018.
The latest statistics, released by the central bank last week, showed the net FDI inflow here stood at $1.42 billion in the January-June period of 2018.
The amount was $0.99 billion in the corresponding period last year.
The Bangladesh Bank data further showed that the net FDI inflow in the past fiscal year (FY) increased by 5.11 per cent over the fiscal before that.
In FY '18, the country received $2.58 billion as net FDI against $2.45 billion in FY '17.
Net FDI is derived by deducting disinvestment from gross inflow of foreign investment.
In FY '18, gross FDI stood at $3.29 billion while the amount of disinvestment was $0.71 billion.
Disinvestment includes capital repatriation, reverse investments, loans given to parent firms and repayments of intra-company loans to parent firms of the multinational companies operating here.
Half the net FDI, $1.25 billion to be precise, came as reinvested earnings of the multinational entities.
The rest was divided as intra-company loan equivalent to $0.71 billion and equity worth $0.62 billion.
This is the final estimate based on FDI enterprise survey conducted by the central bank.
The survey data provides a comprehensive picture of the FDI inflow in the country.
Earlier, the primary estimate of the balance of payment showed that FDI inflow declined in the past fiscal.
Nevertheless, the final value of the FDI falls far short of $5.87 billion projected for FY '18 in the Seventh Five-Year Plan.