The government-approved foreign direct investment (FDI) totaled US$4.98 billion in the first eight months of the year, down 46.58 percent from a year earlier, the Investment Commission’s latest report showed on Friday.
With the global economy slowing, foreign investors have shown less interest in local investment this year. The commission’s tallies showed that the total number of FDI applications approved by the government dropped 6.63 percent to 1,323 during the first eight months from a year earlier.
The report also showed that foreign investors have remitted a net US$1.55 billion in Taiwan’s stock market in the first eight months, citing statistics compiled by the Securities and Futures Bureau. But the report didn’t provide the same-period figure from last year for comparison.
Foreign investors have sold a net NT$225.35 billion (US$7 billion) in Taiwanese shares in the first eight months, which helped drive the benchmark TAIEX down by 17.2 percent over the same period, the Taiwan Stock Exchange’s data showed.
The adverse global economic situation has affected Taiwanese companies’ outward investment over the same period as well, the commission said.
Total outward investment to all regions excluding China fell 7.35 percent year-on-year to US$2.58 billion from January to last month, with the number of applications dropping 14.24 percent to 277, the report showed.
The report also showed that the government approved US$5.62 billion in China-bound investment by Taiwanese companies in the first eight months, down 9.91 percent from a year earlier. The number of applications was 356 over the same period, down 48.63 percent from a year earlier, it showed.
Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Anna Paulson on Thursday joined the chorus of policymakers saying additional interest-rate increases may be needed to ensure inflation returns to the central bank’s 2 percent goal. “Looking ahead, if conditions evolve as I expect, some modest further tightening may be warranted,” Paulson said on Thursday at an event in Philadelphia. Earlier on Thursday, New York Fed President John Williams said he and his colleagues “still have a lot of work to do” in dealing with lingering inflation risks. Several other officials have aired similar comments, in line with the signal given last week when policymakers voted
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