BVI is among top investors again – 2nd in Chinese FDI in 2007

In the middle of June, the Ministry of Commerce of China published data from the first 5 months of 2007 regarding foreign direct investment in China.

According to the released data, to support 15,072 newly established foreign investment enterprises, $25.26 billion was used in the above-mentioned period (January – May). To compare the figure with 2006, the dollar amount increased by 10%, however, the actual number of new ventures decreased by 4%.

The numbers for May show the same tendency – there was $4.9 billion in foreign capital invested, which is an increase of 8.7%, however, the number of new ventures dropped almost 10%.

During the 5-month period, the top 10 countries that contributed 86% of all the money invested into new Chinese ventures were as follows:

1. Hong Kong,
2. the BVI,
3. Japan,
4. South Korea,
5. Singapore,
6. the US,
7. the Cayman Islands,
8. Samoa,
9. Taiwan,
10. Mauritius.

It is common nowadays that the leading investors – Hong Kong and the British Virgin Islands – are the countries where many Chinese companies register for tax purposes, which could be at least one of the reasons why these jurisdictions were the top sources of FDI to China.