The Kuwaiti-based Arab Investment & Export Credit Guarantee Corporation (Dhaman) revealed that the UAE received the largest number of foreign direct investment projects in the Arab region during the period between 2015 to 2019, with a share of 41 percent, followed by Saudi Arabia with 513 projects and a share of 12 percent, and Egypt, with 476 projects, constituting 11 percent of the total number of projects.
In a recent report, Dhaman said that Egypt topped the 10 Arab countries receiving projects according to the investment cost during the period between 2015 and 2019, with 476 projects with an investment cost of $124.48 billion, and a share of 35.2 percent.
Egypt is followed by the UAE with $53.6 billion (15.2 percent) and Saudi Arabia, with $53 billion of investment projects (15 percent).
In its report, Dhaman also pointed out that the number of new FDI projects launched by the GCC countries in the world decreased by 8 percent during the first quarter of 2020 to reach 70 projects.
Saudi Arabia topped the list of the largest Gulf countries investing abroad with a share of 49 percent, followed by the Emirates with a share of 38 percent, then Bahrain with 10 percent, Qatar with 2 percent, Kuwait with 1.2 percent, while no investments were recorded from the Sultanate of Oman.
The corporation expected that FDI flows in the Arab region would decrease by between 21 to 51 percent, based on the length of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, with losses ranging between USD7.1 billion and USD 17.2 billion.