Net foreign direct investments total $66M in Sept — BSP

Foreign direct investments (FDI) in September 2010 yielded net inflows of $66 million amid concerns over the exposure of European banks to sovereign debt and the fragile economic recovery of the US, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said Friday. The net FDI inflows booked in September this year was a turnaround from the $54-million net outflows recorded in the same month last year, BSP said. “The moderate inflows this year reflected cautious investor sentiment on the back of renewed concerns over the exposure of European banks to sovereign debt and the health of the American economy, notwithstanding the strong fundamentals in the domestic economy," BSP Gov. Amando Tetangco Jr. said. For the first nine months of the year, net FDI inflows dropped by 31.8 percent to $1.093 billion from $1.603 billion in the same period in 2009, the central bank said. The central bank has forecast a net FDI inflow of $2 billion this year, up 5.3 percent from $1.9 billion in 2009. Net FDI inflows, portfolio inflows, and remittances from Filipinos working abroad help keep the country’s balance of payments (BOP) in surplus. The BSP said it expects the BOP surplus to hit $8.2 billion, more than double an earlier estimate of $3.7 billion, on strong exports, remittances, and fund inflows. The BOP surplus in the first nine months of the year stood at $6.54 billion. The country’s BOP was in surplus of nearly $5.3 billion in 2009, the biggest in two years. — JE/OMG, GMANews.TV