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29 Jul 2011

UN Launches World Investment Report 2011 in Beirut

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WIR 2011.JPG

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows to the ESCWA region dropped by 15 per cent between 2009 and 2010, settling on 57 billion USD from the former 67 billion USD. Save for Oman and Lebanon, this drop affected all ESCWA countries. These are the highlights of the presentation by Abulgasim Abdullah, Chief of Financing for Development Section at ESCWA Economic Development and Globalization Division, at the launching of World Investment Report 2011 (WIR 2011). Subtitled "Non-Equity Modes of International Production and Development", WIR 2011 was launched by the UN Information Centre (UNIC) in Beirut in cooperation with ESCWA. This annual report is published each year by UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). UNIC Public Information Officer Margo El Helou said the report is essential on the global scale, namely in monitoring foreign investments around the world. The report, she added, contains analysis of the trends in FDI and the prevailing policies. It also offers a series of recommendations and a statistical annex with data on FDI flows. In his presentation, Abdullah said that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) still received the most FDI inflows in 2010, which amounted to 28 billion USD. Egypt came second with 6 billion USD, and Qatar third with 5.5 billion USD. Lebanon, for its part, maintained the fourth place, albeit with a slight increase from 4.8 billion USD in 2009 to 5 billion USD in 2010, while the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was ranked fifth with 4 billion USD approximately. FDI flows from the ESCWA region retracted by 51 per cent between 2009 and 2010, reaching 12.5 billion USD. This originated from the decrease in Kuwaiti flows from 8.6 billion USD to 2.1 billion USD because of the sale of a major telecommunication company. Another reason is the sharp decrease in Qatari flows from 11.6 billion USD in 2009 to 1.9 billion USD in 2010. KSA ranked first with foreign investments totaling about 4 billion USD. Abdullah concluded with some of the report's main findings on investment trends. Over half of ESCWA countries' foreign investments are placed in developed countries, namely in chemicals, transport and hotel sectors. A big part of the remaining investments is placed in Arab countries, namely in real estate, oil and gas, and hotel sectors.
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