ABU DHABI

The United Arab Emirates tops the list of Arab countries for Foreign Direct Investment, FDI, inflows, with around $9 billion, Dh33.3 billion, during 2016 followed by Egypt then the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the third place, according to the Arab Investment and Export Credit Guarantee Corporation, Dhaman.

As per the investment climate report issued by the Kuwait-based company, GCC states outperformed other Arab countries in terms of FDI inflows during 2016, and even improved as compared to the 2015 levels.

The investment index helps decision makers to gauge weaknesses and strengths for each nation in terms of its ability to attract FDI in a way that develops more investment-conducive policies and devise measures needed to improve the climate environment.
 The report, which relies on the World Investment Report 2017 released by UN Conference for Trade and Development, UNCTAD, along with a number of other data bases related to FDIs around the world as well as other national sources, mentioned that FDI inflows to Arab countries increased 25 per cent to $30.8 billion in 2016 from $24.6 billion in 2015, remarking that investments bound to Arab countries claimed 1.8 per cent of the total world investment inflows in 2016 and 4.8 per cent of those received by developing world countries which totalled $646 billion for the same year.

The 2016’s FDIs continued to be focused on a limited number of Arab countries, with the UAE and Egypt comprising 80 per cent thereof, according to the report.

In the meantime, investment outflows from Arab nations declined by14 per cent to $31.3 billion, accounting for 2.2 per cent of the world’s total outflows, estimated at $1542 billion, and 8.2 per cent of outflows from developing countries, put at $383 billion for the same monitoring period.

According to the report, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and Lebanon are, respectively, the main sources for investment outflows for 2016, claiming 74 per cent of total investments from Arab countries. In the meantime, FDI inflows resumed to Kuwait with a total of $6.3 billion.