Foreign direct investment (FDI) into China increased 16.1 percent last month, the government said yesterday, with cash infusions from Asian economies and the US showing the steepest rises.
FDI, which excludes investment in financial sectors, totaled US$10.8 billion last month, the commerce ministry said in a statement.
Separately, Chinese overseas investment rose 47.2 percent to US$7.23 billion last month, the ministry said, including a huge increase to Japan, a country with which China is embroiled in a bitter territorial dispute. Investment to Japan soared 500 percent last month from the same month last year, with that to Russia surging 282 percent, the ministry said.
By far the greatest proportion of investment into China comes from a group of 10 Asian countries and regions including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand and Singapore.
FDI from those economies rose 22.2 percent to US$9.55 billion, the ministry said.
US investors put US$369 million into the country last month, up 34.9 percent.
“Investment from the 10 Asian countries and regions and the US maintained steady and fast growth,” ministry spokesman Shen Danyang (沈丹陽) said in the statement.
“We expect FDI to maintain a good growth momentum this year,” Shen later told reporters.
Last month’s double-digit increase showed that investors were still confident in China’s economic outlook, he added. Growth was mainly driven by service sector investments, he said.
However, investment from the EU declined sharply, decreasing 41.3 percent to US$482 million.
Of China’s outbound investment, 63.3 percent or US$4.58 billion went to Hong Kong, ASEAN, the EU, Australia, the US, Russia and Japan.
The figures come after foreign investment into China rebounded last year to US$117.59 billion as confidence in the country’s growth potential picked up. It had declined the year before.
Investment by China overseas also rose last year, hitting US$90.17 billion, and officials said it could overtake the incoming total as early as this year.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by