(Reuters) – China’s outbound direct investment soared in the first five months to 278.4 billion yuan ($44.84 billion), official data showed, closing a gap with foreign direct investment inflows as local firms flock overseas for growth opportunities.<\/p>\n
The 47.4 percent jump in outbound investment, made by non-financial firms, built on the 36.1 percent rise in the first four months.<\/p>\n
In the first five months of the year, FDI grew 10.5 percent from a year earlier to 331.0 billion yuan, marking a slight slowdown from 11.1 percent growth in January-April, the Commerce Ministry said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The government has been encouraging firms to invest abroad to slow down the rapid build-up of foreign exchange reserves and help local firms become more competitive internationally.<\/p>\n
Analysts expect outbound investment will soon match and overtake the weakening investment inflows, reflecting a cooling economy which in turn seems to have prompted a large jump in outbound flows as businesses looked for growth elsewhere.<\/p>\n
“The outbound investment is quickening. It’s very likely to surpass foreign direct investment this year,” said Han Xiushen, a researcher at the commerce ministry’s think-tank.<\/p>\n
She expects more Chinese firms to invest overseas under Beijing’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative to develop trade and transport infrastructure across Asia and beyond.<\/p>\n
“The domestic economy is slowing and firms need to find a way to export excess production capacity”.<\/p>\n
FDI INFLOWS SLOWING<\/p>\n
The ministry said that FDI in May increased 7.8 percent from a year earlier to 57.4 billion yuan. No ODI figures were given for the month.<\/p>\n
The ministry did not provide a growth figure in dollar terms, just as in the previous month, meaning there is a discrepancy between the growth figures published for May and April compared with previous growth rates, which were officially released in dollar-denominated terms.<\/p>\n
Last year, China drew a record $119.6 billion worth of FDI, while ODI surged 14.1 percent to a new high of $102.9 billion.<\/p>\n
FDI is an important gauge of the health of the external economy that sustains China’s vast factory sector, but is a small contributor to overall capital flows compared with exports, which were worth $2.3 trillion in 2014.<\/p>\n
Chinese factories have been buffeted by lacklustre foreign demand and excess capacity in the past two years. A property downturn has added to strains on an economy growing at its slowest pace in over two decades, even as a barrage of stimulus steps from Beijing appears to be stirring some momentum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Reuters) – China’s outbound direct investment soared in the first five months to 278.4 billion yuan ($44.84 billion), official data showed, closing a gap with foreign direct investment inflows as local firms flock overseas for growth opportunities. The 47.4 percent jump in outbound investment, made by non-financial firms, built on the 36.1 percent rise in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/advokatibeograd.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/advokatibeograd.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/advokatibeograd.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advokatibeograd.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advokatibeograd.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=835"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/advokatibeograd.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":928,"href":"https:\/\/advokatibeograd.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835\/revisions\/928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/advokatibeograd.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advokatibeograd.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advokatibeograd.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}