The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in its report ‘The World Investment Report 2019’ has said that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to India surged by 6% to $42 billion in 2018, with strong inflows in the manufacturing, communication and financial services sectors, and cross-border merger and acquisition activities. The report ranked India among the top 20 host economies for FDI inflows in 2017-18. It also emphasized that prospects for FDI inflows into South Asia are largely determined by expectations of growing investment into India.
The report mentioned that India has historically accounted for 70 to 80% of inflows to the subregion. Further, the growth in cross-border M&As for India from $23 billion in 2017 to $33 billion in 2018 was primarily due to transactions in retail trade ($16 billion), which includes e-commerce, and telecommunication ($13 billion). The report added that India and the UAE, not traditionally in the top 20 outward investor countries, were also considered as among the top 10 most important sources of FDI for the 2019 to 2021 period.
Besides, the report showed that FDI inflows to developing countries in Asia rose by 3.9% to $512 billion in 2018, with growth occurring mainly in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia and other ASEAN countries, as well as India and Turkey. The Asian region remained the world's largest FDI recipient, absorbing 39% of global inflows in 2018, up from 33% in 2017. FDI inflows to South Asia increased by 3.5 per cent to $54 billion. However, global FDI flows slid by 13% in 2018 to $1.3 trillion from $1.5 trillion the previous year -the third consecutive annual decline.
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