Foreign portfolio investment transactions yield net inflows in February

March 14, 2019

Registered investments for February amounted to $1.4 billion, lower by 31.6 percent compared to the $2.1 billion for January, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas said Thursday.

Year-on-year, however, inflows rose by 34.9 percent compared to the $1 billion for the same period a year ago.

About 77.4 percent of investments registered during the month were in Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) listed securities (pertaining mainly to banks, holding firms, property companies, food, beverage and tobacco companies, and transportation companies).

22.4 percent went to peso government securities and the 0.2 percent balance went to other peso debt instruments.

The United Kingdom, the United States (US), Singapore, Luxembourg, and Norway were the top five investor countries for the month, with combined share to total at 67 percent.

Outflows for the month ($1.1 billion) were lower compared to figures recorded for January ($1.3 billion or by 17.6 percent) and February 2018 ($1.6 billion or by 32 percent).

The US continued to be the main destination of outflows, receiving 80.3 percent of total remittances.

On the overall, transactions for the month resulted in net inflows of $340 million, which may be attributed to investor optimism arising from developments on trade negotiations between the US and China and the passage of the tariffication law, which is expected to help boost the rice supply in the country and thereby temper inflation.

On a month-on-month basis, the figure is lower vis-a-vis the $763 million recorded for January; while year-on-year it reflected an improvement from the $529 million net outflows for February 2018.

Net inflows were noted for all investment instruments: PSE-listed securities ($175 million); peso government securities ($162 million); and other peso debt instruments ($53 million). DMS