Press Release No. 12/473

Press Release No. 12/473
December 6, 2012

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) today released preliminary results from its 2011 annual Coordinated Direct Investment Survey (CDIS). The CDIS is the Fund’s worldwide survey of bilateral foreign direct investment positions¹. The survey has been conducted annually since 2009. The results, published as an online database, comprise preliminary estimates of positions for end-2011 and revised estimates for 2009‒2010. The IMF will also post revised data for 2009 forward in mid-2013.The end-2011 survey includes data from 86 economies. New participants include Benin, Guatemala, Mali, and Venezuela.

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 into the reporting economy) cross-classified by economy of investor, and data on “outward” direct investment (i.e., direct investment abroad by the reporting economy) cross-classified by economy of investment. All participants in the CDIS provided data on their inward direct investment and most participants (more than two-thirds) also provided data on their outward direct investment.

The CDIS database contains breakdowns of direct investment position data 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 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.

The creation of the CDIS database is a collaborative effort by the IMF and its international partners—including the European Central Bank, Eurostat, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development—to facilitate improvement in the quality of direct investment data worldwide.

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.