Foreign Direct Investment Stock Statistics
Special Statistical Publication 10:
“Foreign Direct Investment Stock Statistics”
The German Federal Bank publishes its report Foreign
Direct Investment Stock Statistics annually, usually in
late April. These statistics only cover FDI stock, including
greenfield investments, M&Atransactions, lines of cred-
its, and bonds. The data are broken down by country of ori –
gin and economic sector. The publication also provides
important key indicators on foreign companies in Germany,
such as their number, annual turnover, and their number of
employees. For investor countries with significant holdings,
there is an additional breakdown of their FDI by industry.
Due to its lowFDI stocks, China is not one of these coun-
tries.
The Foreign Trade and Payments Ordinance (Außen-
wirtschaftsverordnung) requires all domestic companies
with a balance sheet total greater than €3 million to report
any foreign investors holding a greater than 10 percent
ownership interest (German Federal Bank 2012: 65-66).
The €3 million threshold excludes smaller enterprises from
the Bundesbank’ s data. However, as these play an impor-
tant role especially in regard to Chinese FDI , additional
data, for example, frominvestment promotion agencies
were consulted.
In 2015, the methodology underlying the calculation of FDI
stock data was adj usted to meet the recently harmonized
international standards published in the OECD Benchmark
Definition of Foreign Direct Investment, 4th edition, and
Balance of Payments Manual, Sixth edition (BPM6) (Ger-
man Federal Bank 2015). The main changes are as follows:
Divergent fromthe gross figures used prior to this, cap-
ital links within multinational groups are netted, loans to
investors are deducted and cross-border sister company
loans are allocated according to the country of domicile of
the group’ s headquarters.
Thus, if the group’ s headquarters
are domiciled in Germany, the affiliated credit relationships
of the enterprises in Germany are counted as positive (in
the case of lending) or negative (in the case of borrowing)
German foreign direct investment abroad, which is referred
to as outward foreign direct investment. If the group’ s
headquarters are domiciled abroad, the loans of the sis-
ter companies of the enterprises in Germany are recorded
as positive (borrowing) or negative (lending) foreign direct
investment in Germany, which is also called inward for-
eign direct investment.
The inclusion of cross-border,
intragroup claims of investment enterprises, in particular,
causes foreign direct investment stocks to decline signifi –
cantly” (Deutsche Bundesbank 2015).
EU Forecast
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