Direct foreign investment continues high this month
Folha de S. Paulo - 01/29/2008
In spite of the crisis recently faced by the international markets, the inflow of direct foreign investment to Brazil continued high at the beginning of this year. According to the partial data released by the Central Bank yesterday, the January capital inflow is approximately US$ 4 billion. Last year, the country received US$ 34.616 billion in investments, the largest value ever registered by the statistical series of the BC, which begun in 1947. The amount corresponds to a monthly average of nearly US$ 2.9 billion. This month the result is influenced by an operation of around US$ 700 million made by the BM&F (Commodities & Futures Exchange), which sold part of its capital to the Chicago Stock Exchange. That purchase was made through a share swap, that is, it did not involve the inflow of fund in the country. Even if that transaction is discounted, the amount accrued until now already surpasses the US$ 2.422 billion in investments that entered the country in January of 2007, for example. There is no direct relationship of the volume of investments this month with the worsening of the crisis in the United States either, for that kind of business decision is taken in advance. The sector that most received foreign investments is metallurgy, with US$ 4.699 billion in funds in 2007. Next come the financial sector (US$ 4.524 billion) and mining (US$ 3.249 billion). The sector of services as a whole had 46.9% of the received investments, while the industrial sector had 39.3%, and the remaining went to agriculture and the mineral extractive sector.