SHORT-TERM investments made by international players reverted to a net outflow in September, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported on Thursday.
Data from the Central Bank showed registered foreign portfolio investments (FPI) for September hit a net outflow of $440.30 million, reversing last month’s $225.85 million.
Also, compared to its year-ago level, the September FPI net outflow figure is a reversal of the $112.63-million net inflow in September 2017.
“This may be attributed to investors’ continuing concerns on trade tensions between the United States and China, the weakening of the Philippine peso and the continued uptick in inflation, which may have been aggravated by the effects of Typhoon Ompong [Mangkhut],” the BSP said on Thursday.
FPI are known as “hot” or “speculative” money because they are easily pulled in and out of the local platforms in the slight change of global and local sentiment.
The US continued to be the main destination of outflows, receiving 73.7 percent of total hot money remittances during the month.
The top five investor countries, meanwhile, included the United Kingdom, the US,
Singapore, Switzerland and Malaysia, with combined share to total at 81.8 percent.
More than four-fifths of the total investments during the period, or 85.7 percent, were listed securities in the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE). These were pertaining mainly to holding firms, banks, property companies, food, beverage and tobacco firms, and telecommunication companies.
The balance went mostly to peso government securities (GS) at 14.3 percent.
Net outflows were noted across all investment instruments, with PSE-listed securities at $351 million, peso GS at $89 million, and other peso-denominated debt instruments with less than $1 million.
For the first nine months of the year, however, the FPI figure remains on the net inflow territory at $161.71 million.
This is a better picture compared to 2017’s $206.25-million net outflow in the first nine months of the year.