Generally less regarded portfolio investments in the first five months this year showed a net outflow of $124.49 million, a 54 percent improvement from a year ago when the exodus of foreign funds totaled $270.42 million.
Year-to-date portfolio investments, which include a week’s worth of such activities in June, similarly showed a net outflow totaling $794.18 million, a 28 percent reversal from last year’s net inflow of $1.106 billion.
The numbers indicate investor preference for safer havens elsewhere where the investment climate is more welcoming than the country’s elevated inflation and higher interest charges for borrowed funds, for instance.
According to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), which did detail the outflows, the foreign funds were deployed in PSE-listed securities which were investments mainly in banks, food, beverage and tobacco, holding firms, property, and transportation services, and the balance were in peso government securities ($256 million or 30.3 percent) and in other instruments (less than one percent).
The top five investor countries, the BSP said, were the United Kingdom, the United States, Singapore, Luxemburg and Hong Kong that on the whole accounted for more than 86 percent of portfolio funds deployed during the period.
Only portfolio investments registered with the BSP are allowed to tap the formal banking system when fund managers finally repatriate their placements to their foreign principals. Unregistered investments need to source their foreign-currency requirements elsewhere.
