By Joanne Santiago
MANILA, July 10 (PNA) — Significant jump in investments in private company-issued debt instruments helped boost foreign direct investments (FDIs) to the Philippines in April 2014.
Data released by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Thursday showed that FDIs to the country reached USD 597 million last April, higher than the USD 476 million in the previous month and year-ago’s USD 149 million.
This was buoyed by intercompany borrowings, which posted a net inflow of USD 518 million and is higher than month-ago’s USD 143 million and year-ago’s USD 23 million.
Another component of the FDI that contributed to the rise in FDIs last April is the reinvested earnings, which totalled to USD 80 million from month-ago’s USD 54 million and year-ago’s USD 63 million.
On, the other hand, equity investments totalled to USD 78 million, slightly lower than the USD 79 million withdrawals, thus, resulting to a USD 1 million net outflows.
The BSP said equity investments last April were placed in the real estate, financial and insurance, accommodation and food service, and transportation and storage.
These came mainly from the US, Japan, Singapore, UK and Germany.
In the first four months of the year, FDIs posted a net inflow of USD 2.4 billion, 9.1 percent higher than year-ago’s USD 2.2 billion and is already near the government’s USD 2.6 billion target for 2014.
”The sustained increase in net inflows continued to reflect strong investor confidence in the country’s solid macroeconomic fundamentals,” the central bank said. (PNA)