The central bank reported Thursday, Aug. 26, that it has registered $339.70 million of net foreign portfolio investments or “hot money” outflows in July, reversing the inflows in June.
The July net outflows is not that far from same time last year of $453 million net outflows, but it reversed the $334.51 million net inflows of the previous month (June).
Based on Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) data, about $1.069 billion of gross outflows were recorded in July versus gross inflows of $729.77 billion.
The BSP said the registered investments for July reflected a 65.3 percent or $1.4 billion decline compared to the $2.1 billion recorded in June this year.
The BSP said about 64.4 percent of investments were placed in listed securities at the Philippine Stock Exchange, such as in property companies, holding firms, food, beverage and tobacco companies, banks and transportation services.
The remaining 35.6 percent were invested in peso government securities.
The top five investor countries for the period, with 77.1 percent of total share, were the United Kingdom, US, Singapore, Norway and Luxembourg. “The US received 63.5 percent of total outflows,” said the BSP.
From January to July, BSP-registered hot money yielded net outflows of $445.88 million, lower than the $3.762 billion net outflows same period in 2020.
The BSP said investors' decisions were largely influenced by these events: the release of inflation data for June 2021; reports of vaccinations put on hold by some local government units due to supply constraints; and rising COVID-19 cases due to the more contagious Delta variant strain.
Investor reaction were also affected by the announcement of the August 6-20 reimposition of enhanced community quarantine in Metro Manila, said the BSP.
Other market-moving developments include Fitch Ratings’ affirmation of the county’s credit rating at “BBB” but the outlook was downgraded from “stable” to “negative”; and the 13.3 percent growth in personal remittances from overseas Filipinos in May.