Foreign portfolio investments yielded net inflows of $83 million in October, following six straight months of net outflows, data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas show.
The BSP said in a statement this resulted from the $645-million gross inflows and $561-million gross outflows in October.
“The $645-million registered investments in October 2022 reflected a decrease of 27.7 percent [or by $247 million] compared to the $892 million registered in September 2022,” the BSP said.
Majority of investments (or 73.0 percent) registered were in Philippine Stock Exchange-listed securities, mainly in property, banks, holding firms, food, beverage and tobacco and telecommunications. The balance went to investments in peso government securities (27.0 percent) and other instruments (less than 1.0 percent).
Investments mostly came from the United Kingdom, the United States, Singapore, Luxembourg and Hong Kong with combined share of 84.4 percent.
The $561-million gross outflows in October went down by 55.4 percent or by $698 million from $1.3 billion in September.
The BSP said foreign portfolio investments in the first 10 months also resulted in net inflows of $305 million, a turnaround from the $680-million net outflows noted in the same period last year.
Portfolio investments are also called “hot money” because of the ease they are invested in and taken out of domestic financial markets.
Hot money in 2021 posted net outflows of $1.4 billion, a reversal of the $8.2-billion net inflows in 2020.
The BSP expects hot money to yield net inflows of $4.5 billion in 2022.