AFP, Geneva :
The coronavirus crisis is expected to drag foreign direct investment down by up to 40 percent this year, with a recovery not expected until 2022, UN economists said Tuesday.
A report by the United Nations Conference on Trade, Investment and Development (UNCTAD) found that lockdowns and the prospect of a deep global recession had dramatically shrunk FDI, which is a measure of cross-border private sector investment.
The agency said that worldwide, FDI was 49 percent lower during the first half of 2020 than during the same period in 2019 – and that every major form of foreign investment took a hit, ranging from infrastructure funding to mergers and acquisitions.
“The decline was quite drastic,” James Zhan, UNCTAD’s investment and enterprise chief, told a virtual press conference.
The rate of decline is expected to slow in the second half of 2020, resulting in a drop of 30 to 40 percent over the whole year, with FDI expected to retract much more moderately in 2021 before recovering in 2022.
