Direct and portfolio foreign investment in Pakistan fell 58.4% in the first four months (July-October) of the 2011/12 fiscal year to $238.1 million, the central bank said on Thursday.
Investment totalled $571.8 million in the same period last year. Incidents of violence in Pakistan’s biggest city of Karachi this year, a Taliban insurgency in the country’s northwest and chronic power shortages have put off long-term investors, analysts said. Foreign direct investment fell 27.7% in July-October 2011 to $340.2 million from $470.5 million in the same period last year, the State Bank of Pakistan said.
Foreign portfolio investment fell 200.8% with outflows of $102.1 million in the first four months of the fiscal year 2011-12, compared with inflows of $101.3 million in the same period last year. At least 400 people were killed in July and August in violence in Karachi and investors have started shunning the bourses.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 18th, 2011.
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