FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT FORECASTS
In addition to their regular economic forecasts, our country panellists are occasionally asked to provide projections for foreign direct investment inflows (FDI) for the current and next year. We undertake special surveys of FDI inflows across our publications Asia Pacific Consensus Forecasts, Latin American Consensus Forecasts and Eastern Europe Consensus Forecasts and the resulting tables and analysis are displayed in both the hard copy and PDF versions of the publications.
| Asia Pacific Consensus Forecasts |
Latin American Consensus Forecasts |
Eastern Europe Consensus Forecasts |
|---|---|---|
| Australia | Argentina | Czech Republic |
| China | Brazil | Hungary |
| Hong Kong | Chile | Poland |
| India | Mexico | Russia |
| Indonesia | Venezuela | Turkey |
| Malaysia | Colombia | Bulgaria |
| New Zealand | Peru | Croatia |
| Philippines | Estonia | |
| Singapore | Latvia | |
| South Korea | Lithuania | |
| Taiwan | Romania | |
| Thailand | Slovakia | |
| Slovenia | ||
| Ukraine |
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The Consensus Forecasts™, representing averages of our individual country panellists' projections, were used to calculate estimates of FDI in relation to country size, i.e. as a share of nominal GDP, and population. The table below shows a small portion of the data from one of our surveys of forecasts Foreign Direct Investment (in this case, from our November 2010 Asia Pacific Consensus Forecasts survey).
| FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT | ||||||||
| Net FDI, US$bn | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 |
| CHINA | 60.6 | 60.3 | 63.0 | 74.8 | 92.4 | 90.0 | 93.4 | 97.8 |
| % of GDP | 3.1 | 2.6 | 2.3 | 2.2 | 2.1 | 1.8 | 1.7 | 1.5 |
| US$ per capita | 46.5 | 46.0 | 47.7 | 56.3 | 69.1 | 66.9 | 68.9 | 71.7 |
| THAILAND | 5.9 | 8.1 | 9.5 | 11.3 | 8.6 | 6.0 | 6.5 | 7.9 |
| % of GDP | 3.6 | 4.6 | 4.5 | 4.6 | 3.1 | 2.3 | 2.0 | 2.2 |
| US$ per capita | 89.8 | 122.1 | 142.1 | 169.1 | 127.2 | 87.9 | 94.6 | 115.1 |
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), i.e. investment in one country by the residents of another, includes equity transactions, reinvested earnings and various inter-company capital transactions. FDI is generally considered to be more motivated by longer term considerations than portfolio investment in tradeable securities. The data is recorded in the financial account of the balance of payments, but cross-country comparisons can often be complicated by the different statistical methods used for compilation and the exchange rate chosen for converting local currency into US dollars. In addition, there can be differences in the minimum equity stake necessary for an investment to qualify as direct investment, rather than portfolio investment. For the majority of countries FDI looks set to pick up this year in line with the robust recovery witnessed across emerging Asia. Although regional activity is expected to moderate in 2011, FDI forecasts remain robust for next year and are set to increase across the board. As usual, China continues to attract the largest share of foreign investment, and this is no surprise since the economy remains one of the fastest growing in Asia.
A portion of the text from Asia Pacific Consensus Forecasts, November 8, 2010