On October 21st 2019, PM Imran Khan tweeted: that foreign direct investment had increased by 111.5 percent. He forgot to mention that this increase was in September 2019, and that despite such a huge increase in September, FDI in the first quarter of FY20 was down 3.1 percent. Perhaps that’s how marketing is done: creating illusions.
It is indeed remarkable that gross FDI inflow in September was nearly $442 million, the highest since July 2017 (nearly 26 months), as one sell side brokerage researcher wrote in excitement. Net FDI inflow in September 2019 was also at a 26-month high of $385 million.
Does this mean that Pakistan will receive higher FDI inflows in FY20? Not necessarily! FDI flows aren’t like portfolio inflows that often track stock valuations, and other macroeconomic and market fundamentals, and therefore X-month high and Y-month low reflects market sentiments. Instead, FDI flows are staggered.
The fact that net FDI inflow had slipped to a low of $155 million didn’t prevent FY18 witness a growth in annual FDI flows, whereas the inflow as high as $319 million in December 2018 didn’t prevent FY19 from witnessing a fall in FDI flows.+
One can’t hide the fact the FDI inflows in September 2019 and 1QFY20 in total aren’t broad-based. Save for a telecom FDI from Norway in September 2019 (which deserves a separate discussion), the picture is embarrassingly poor. Excluding Norway, net FDI is actually 33 percent year-on-year down in September 2019. But the Marketeer-in-Chief perhaps hasn’t been briefed about these numbers.
Meanwhile, with all the CPEC hype being reinvigorated these days, inflows from China and Hong Kong are actually down - both in September 2019 and 1QFY20 on the whole. Talks of business-to-business coordination in the second phase of CPEC have begun to make rounds of late, but it is too early to expect that these B2B transactions would result in actual inflows across various sectors within the current fiscal year. Don’t get high just yet!
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