SANTIAGO, July 10 (Xinhua) -- Latin America and the Caribbean received a record 224.579 billion U.S. dollars in foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2022, or 55.2 percent more than in 2021, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) said Monday.
According to the United Nations agency's latest annual report on FDI in the region, FDI inflows to regional countries had not topped 200 billion U.S. dollars in nearly 10 years.
"Since 2013, annual FDI inflows to Latin American and Caribbean countries did not exceed 200 billion dollars. This makes 2022 an important milestone for the entire decade," said ECLAC's Executive Secretary Jose Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs when presenting the report at a press conference in Santiago, Chile.
Leading the list of countries with the most FDI were Brazil, which received 41 percent of the regional total, followed by Mexico (17 percent), Chile (9 percent), Colombia (8 percent), Argentina (7 percent) and Peru (5 percent).
"The challenge of attracting and retaining Foreign Direct Investment that contributes effectively to the region's sustainable and inclusive productive development is more relevant than ever," said Salazar-Xirinachs.
"There are new opportunities in an era of reconfiguration of global value chains and geographic relocation of production in the face of a changing globalization," he added.
The rise in FDI "is consistent with the post-pandemic recovery and it is unclear whether it will stay at similar levels in 2023," the report noted.
The main investors in the region were the United States and the European Union (excluding the Netherlands and Luxembourg), though FDI coming from countries within the Latin America and Caribbean region also experienced a significant increase, rising from 9 percent to 14 percent of the total. ■
