Asignificant global financial landmark is passing virtually unnoticed – obscured, perhaps, by the ongoing fallout from the economic and financial crisis in industrialised countries.
According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), foreign direct investment to emerging markets and developing countries in 2008 amounted to $730bn or about 43 per cent of global FDI receipts. If trends from the first half of 2009 continue, FDI to emerging markets and developing countries, which are sometimes referred to as “the South”, is on track to exceed direct investment in the mature markets of “the North”, according to Columbia University's Vale Institute.
Granted, part of this reversal is due to the collapse in flows to developed markets, which were down by more than 50 per cent, year on year, in the first half of 2009.