Southeast Asia attractive destination for FDI: report

Southeast Asia became an attractive destination for foreign direct investment (FDI), according to a report released by the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Tuesday.

The inflow of FDI increased by 16.8 percent in 2017, the BFA Progress of Asian Economic Integration Annual report 2019 said.

Indonesia and Thailand attracted the most foreign direct investment in 2017. FDI inflows into Indonesia increased, unprecedentedly, by 488.2 percent and that into Thailand by 269.2 percent in 2017, said the report.

The report said ASEAN has benefited from deeper integration in Asia as intraregional flows become a very important source of FDI.

"For example, 84 percent of China's outward direct investment is directed at Asia as compared to 79 percent in 2016," said the report.

The report is a scorecard on the progress of integration in Asia and a description of major economic issues in the Asian region in the past, especially of events that occurred the previous year.

The BFA annual conference runs from March 26 to 29 in Boao, a coastal town in China's southern island province of Hainan.