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Statistical Yearbook for Asia and the Pacific 2014 29. International finance Foreign direct investment and remittances into the region are on the rise; but aid has declined. External debt is moderate, except in some countries. Foreign direct investment (FDI) to the region has remained large and robust. Inflows of FDI to the Asia-Pacific region increased slightly in 2013 to around $545.1 billion from around $511.5 billion in 2012. All subregions received more FDI, except the Pacific subregion where FDI declined from $61 billion in 2012 to $53.5 billion in 2013. Among the Asia-Pacific subregions, East and North-East Asia continues to attract the largest amount of FDI inflows, followed by South-East Asia. The Pacific island developing economies attract less than 1% of the region’s FDI inflows. FDI flows within Asia and the Pacific are on the rise. ASEAN countries and China are especially attractive destinations for East and North-East Asian investors, who account for the largest share of intraregional investments in the Asia-Pacific region. FDI inflows to ASEAN countries from other Asia-Pacific countries remained stable at $56 billion in 2013.1 Australia, China, India, the Republic of Korea, Japan and New Zealand had combined FDI flows of $217 billion in 2013, accounting for 15% of global FDI inflows in 2013. Asia and the Pacific remains the highest remittance-receiving region in the world, both in absolute and relative terms. By 2013, remittances to developing countries in Asia and the Pacific had increased from $49 billion in 2000 to $265 billion.2 Many countries in Central Asia are highly dependent on remittances as indicated by the percentage of their GDP — Armenia (21.3%), Kyrgyzstan (31.4%), Tajikistan (47.5%) and Georgia (11.2%). In the Pacific subregion, remittances account for around 20% of GDP in Samoa. In South Asia, Nepal has the highest dependence on remittances (over 26% of GDP), followed by Bangladesh (11% of GDP) and Sri Lanka (10% of GDP). The Philippines is the only country in South-East Asia with a high dependence on remittances (9.8% of GDP). Official development assistance (ODA) or aid flows to the region has declined from around $32 billion in 2011 to $30 billion in 2012 — a drop of 6%. Most Pacific island countries (Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu) and Afghanistan remain high-aid-dependent countries in the region, with aid exceeding 30% of GDP in 2012 — for Tuvalu the figure stood at 61.5%. External debt remained high in many countries in the region. External debt to GDP ratios in 2012 were 147.5% in Papua New Guinea, 93.1% in Kyrgyzstan, 84.8% in Georgia, 76.5% in Armenia, 70.0% in Lao People’s Democratic Republic, 67.6% in Kazakhstan, 62.1% in Samoa, 49.5% in Mongolia, 49.1% in Vanuatu, 47.8% in Tajikistan and 40.7% in Cambodia. The Asia-Pacific region remains an attractive destination for FDI. But among the subregions, the Pacific is the least favoured and East and North-East Asia the most favoured destinations. The Asia-Pacific region remains the highest remittance-receiving region in the world, both in absolute and relative terms; but it accounts for less than 1% of the region’s GDP, compared with over 3% for Africa. Aid flows have been highly volatile — the East and North-East Asia subregion experiencing a decline of over 122% in 2011 and 251% in 2012. In many countries external debt exceeds 40% of GDP — a threshold level that the International Monetary Fund generally regards as risky; debt servicing in many countries in the region accounts for over 10% of their income from exports. 1 2 1 United Nations, Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific 2014 (Bangkok, 2014), p. 22. 2 Ibid, p. 23 29