Press Release No. 11/479

Press Release: IMF Releases Results from its 2010 Coordinated Direct Investment Survey

December 20, 2011

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) today released results from its 2010 Coordinated Direct Investment Survey (CDIS), the IMF’s worldwide survey of bilateral foreign direct investment positions. The results, published as an online database, cover investment positions data for 89 participating economies at end 2009 and preliminary positions data for 83 economies at end 2010.

The IMF will post revised and more comprehensive 2010 data in mid-2012. New CDIS participants are Aruba, Brazil, Georgia, India, Macedonia, Montenegro, Seychelles, and Uruguay. With the recent addition of Brazil and India, all four BRICs are participating in the CDIS. For the 80 economies that have reported data for 2009 and 2010, inward direct investment positions increased from US$19.4 trillion to US$20.7 trillion, up nearly 7 percent.

Direct investment is a category of cross-border investment where a resident in one economy has control or a significant degree of influence on the management of an enterprise resident in another economy. This category of investment is of large and growing importance, increasing the need to improve data about it.

The database−available publicly at http://cdis.imf.org and through the IMF elibrary−presents detailed data on “inward” direct investment (i.e., direct investment into the reporting economy) cross-classified by economy of investor, and data on “outward” direct investment (i.e., direct investment abroad by the reporting economy) cross-classified by economy of investment. All participants in the CDIS provided data on their inward direct investment and most participants also provided data on their outward direct investment. The CDIS database contains breakdowns of direct investment position data, including, in most instances, separate data on equity and debt positions, as well as “mirror” data for all economies (i.e., data on direct investment positions obtained from counterpart economies’ data). Mirror data (or derived data) may be compared to an economy’s own estimates vis-à-vis the counterpart. Derived data often are useful in highlighting data gaps or errors, and therefore where follow up efforts may prove beneficial.

The CDIS website has been redesigned to facilitate user access to data reports, by enhanced navigation, data selection and display features. Metadata coverage has been enhanced both in terms of information detail as well as the number of metadata reporters.

The survey is being conducted annually, with revised data released semi-annually, and country participation and geographical detail is being broadened over time.

The creation of the CDIS database is a collaborative effort by the IMF and its international agency partners—including the European Central Bank, Eurostat, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development— to facilitate improvement in the quality of direct investment data worldwide. The IMF is grateful to its international agency partners and, especially, to participating economies for their strong support.