Press Release No. 13/486

Press Release: IMF Releases Results from 2012 Coordinated Direct Investment Survey

December 3, 2013

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) today released preliminary results from its 2012 Coordinated Direct Investment Survey (CDIS), the Fund’s worldwide survey of bilateral direct investment positions.¹ The survey has been conducted annually since 2009, with revised data released semiannually. The results, published as an online database, comprise preliminary direct investment positions data for end 2012 and revised data for 2009-2011. The 2012 survey includes data from 88 economies, two more than in the 2011 preliminary results. New CDIS participants are Burkina Faso and Tanzania. The IMF will also post revised and more comprehensive data in June 2014.

In 2012, 64 percent of the total inward direct investment (US$26 trillion) was concentrated in the 10 economies with the largest inward direct investment, and 78 percent of the total outward direct investment (US$26.6 trillion) originated from the 10 economies with the largest outward direct investment. For the 86 economies that reported data in both 2011 and 2012, inward direct investment positions increased from US$24.1 trillion in 2011 to US$26.0 trillion in 2012, up 7.9 percent.

The CDIS database—available publicly at http://cdis.imf.org and through the IMF e-library—presents detailed data on “inward” direct investment (i.e., direct investment positions with a nonresident foreign direct investor) cross-classified by economy of investor, and data on “outward” direct investment (i.e., direct investment positions abroad by a resident foreign direct investor) cross-classified by economy of investment. All participants in the CDIS provided data on inward direct investment and most participants (more than two-thirds) also provided data on outward direct investment.

The CDIS database contains breakdowns of direct investment positions including, in most instances, separate data on net equity and net debt positions, as well as tables that present “mirror” data, in which data from the reporting economy are shown side-by-side with the data obtained from all other counterpart reporting economies. Mirror data may be compared to an economy’s own estimates vis-à-vis the counterpart. Mirror data are useful in highlighting data gaps or errors, and therefore where follow-up efforts may prove beneficial. The CDIS website also allows users access to metadata reports (which provide information on the characteristics of the data reported in the CDIS by a given country, including its data coverage and compilation methodology).

¹ 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. The CDIS supports the objective of developing from–whom–to–whom cross border data, contributing to a better understanding of financial interconnectedness.