KUWAIT CITY: Foreign direct investment into Arab states rose by 9.8 percent last year despite unrest in some of them but remained well below its level in 2010, when the Arab Spring erupted, a report said yesterday.
Arab states attracted FDI worth $47.1bn in 2012 compared with $42.9bn the previous year, the Arab Investment and Export Credit Guarantee Corp said in its annual report.
But that was 28.5 percent lower than the figure of $66.2bn in 2010, said the Kuwaiti-based organisation.
The report covered 20 out of the 22 Arab League states, excluding war-torn Syria and the tiny Comoros.
FDI rose in 15 of them, including four countries — Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen — that witnessed violent unrest during the past three years.
Opec kingpin Saudi Arabia topped the list of inflows with $12.2bn, representing 25.8 percent of the total even though its share dropped by 25 percent from the previous year.
Inflows to the United Arab Emirates rose 25 percent to $9.6 billion, or 20.8 percent of the total.
Lebanon came third with $7.8bn followed by Algeria with $6.2bn, the report said.
In Egypt, the value of FDI rose from a negative $483m in 2011 to $2.8bn last year. In Tunisia it increased by 68 percent to $1.95bn.
AFP
