The central bank-registered foreign portfolio investments in March registered a net outflow of $305 million, reversing February’s net inflow of $274 million.

Compared to March 2021, the $305 million net outflows is smaller than the $541 million net outflows at the time.
Based on Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) data, hot money flows which are highly speculative funds, amounted to $1.277 billion gross inflows and $1.582 billion gross outflows for the month of March.
The BSP on Thursday, April 28, said about 86.7 percent of inflows were invested in listed securities at the stock market, mainly in sectors such as holding firms, property, banks, food/beverage/tobacco, and transportation services.
The remaining 13.3 percent were placed in peso government securities.
In March, the top investor countries were the United Kingdom, US, Luxembourg, Singapore and Hong Kong.
The five countries contributed a combined share of 78.4 percent to total.
The US continue to receive bulk of outflows or withdrawn funds at 80.3 percent of total remittances.
For the first three months of hot money transactions, the BSP registered net ouflows of $16 million which was down by 96.6 percent or by $467 million compared to $483 million net outflows same period in 2021.
For this year, the BSP is projecting hot money net inflows of $4 billion. For 2023, the expectation is higher at $6.7 billion.
Last year, the BSP registered hot money net outflows of $574.46 million, down by 86.5 percent compared to $4.24 billion net outflows in 2020.
Foreign portfolio investments are inward foreign investments in publicly-listed securities, peso-denominated government securities and peso time deposits with banks with minimum tenor of 90 days.
These funds are also invested in other peso debt instruments, unit investment trust funds, and portfolio investments such as Exchange Traded Funds and Philippine Depositary Receipts.