Foreign investments or “hot money” registered with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) in February amounted to a net outflow of $531.27 million, reversing the inflows in January and same period last year.
Based on BSP data, authorized agent banks (AABs) registered gross outflows of $1.211 billion in February while gross inflows totaled $679.96 million. In the same period in 2021, there was a higher gross inflows of $944.51 million while gross outflows was lower at $670.47 million.
Including January, hot money for the first two months of 2023 yielded net outflows of $239 million, a turnaround from the $289 million net inflows same time in 2022, said the BSP.
About 79.6 percent of registered foreign investments through AABs were in Philippine Stock Exchange-listed securities, mainly in banks, holding firms, property, food, beverage, tobacco, electricity, energy, power and water.
Another 20.4 percent were invested in peso government securities while less than one percent were kept in other instruments.
The BSP noted that February’s top five investor countries were the United Kingdom, the US, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, and Singapore with combined share to total of 82.5 percent.
Foreign investments registered via AABs are inward foreign investments placed in listed securities, government bonds, time deposits, other debt instruments, and unit investment trust funds, among others.
In 2022, the BSP registered $886.7 million net hot money inflows. This was lower than the projected net foreign investments of $3.5 billion.
For this year, the BSP estimate is $2.5 billion and $3.5 billion in 2024.
Formerly known as foreign portfolio investments, these are tallied under the financial account of the balance of payments data.
Meanwhile, the registration of foreign investments with the BSP is optional under the rules on foreign exchange (FX) transactions.
As explained by the BSP, “it is required only if the investor or its representative will purchase FX from AABs and/or their subsidiary/affiliate foreign exchange corporations for repatriation of capital and remittance of earnings that accrue on the registered investment.”