Foreign investment down 15.8 percent in China

March 16, 2009 News

Foreign direct investment in China fell 15.8 percent in February from a year earlier, the government said on Monday.

Investments last month by foreign businesses, not including financial institutions, reached 5.83 billion dollars, the commerce ministry said at a briefing.
The number of newly-established firms declined by 13 percent to 1,265, ministry spokesman Yao Jian said.

He said foreign direct investment in the first two months of the year totalled 13.37 billion dollars, down 26.23 percent over the same period in 2008.

The figure has been under pressure in recent months amid the global financial crisis . Foreign direct investment in China rose 23.6 percent for the full-year 2008 to 92.4 billion dollars compared with the year before, state media reported in January.

Such investment is one of the factors driving the rapid growth of China's foreign exchange reserves, which topped 1.95 trillion dollars at the end of December.