RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil was the economy that attracted the sixth most foreign direct investment in the world in the first half of 2021.
Between April and June, however, an unusual situation occurred: the country made more direct investments abroad than it attracted, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study on global FDI flows released Friday (29).
In 2020, Brazilian companies invested a total of US$12.989 billion abroad.
In the current year, Brazilian companies made direct investments of US$778 million in the first quarter and US$9.459 billion in the second quarter.
In comparison, foreign direct investment in Brazil reached US$14.5 billion in the first quarter and declined to US$8.045 billion in the second quarter. In other words, between April and June, Brazilian direct investment abroad was US$1.4 billion higher than foreign investment in Brazil.
However, in the first half of the year as a whole, the volume of foreign direct investment in Brazil was greater than that of Brazilians abroad. FDI in Brazil totaled US$23 billion in the first half of 2021. In the same period of 2020, it was US$16 billion.
Between January and June this year, Brazil was the economy that attracted the sixth most foreign direct investment after China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and India, maintaining its position from last year.
Brazilian companies had a stock of direct investment abroad of US$277.4 billion in December last year, equivalent to 19.3% of gross domestic product (GDP), compared to 13.2% a year earlier.
Foreign companies, in turn, had a stock of direct investment of US$608 billion in the Brazilian economy, equivalent to 42.4% of GDP, compared to 37.6% a year earlier.
Between January and June of this year, global FDI inflows reached US$870 billion, more than double the volume in the same period of 2020 and 43% higher than before the pandemic in 2019. The OECD data are consistent with those recently published by the United Nations Trade and Development Agency (Unctad).