BOI attracts US $ 713mn in FDI in first nine months

From left: BOI Chairman Raja Edirisuriya, Investment Promotion State Minister Dilum Amunugama and BOI Director General Renuka Weerakone

• Says 71% of 2022 full-year FDI target of US $ 1bn fulfilled 
• Inks 123 investment agreements to a value of US $ 1.9bn
• Export revenue of BOI enterprises tops US $ 7.9bn
• BOI enterprises account for over 65% of overall export earnings

The Board of Investment of Sri Lanka (BOI) has attracted foreign direct investment (FDI) of US $ 713 million in the first nine months of 2022, the state-run investment promotion body said in a statement yesterday.

This was a 71 percent of the 2022 full-year FDI target of US $ 1 billon, it added.
Further, as of the first 11 months of 2022, the BOI had inked a total of 123 agreements to the value of US $ 1.9 billion-US $ 1.5 billion in new projects and US $ 400 million in expansions. 

New projects were from countries such as India, Japan, Norway, Hong Kong, the UK, USA and Singapore. 
Out of 41 new projects, the majority were from the manufacturing sector, including apparel, followed by ICT, tourism, infrastructure, utilities, services and agriculture.

Expansions of the existing projects were from the manufacturing sector, including apparel, followed by logistics, telecommunication, ICT and agriculture.

Meanwhile, the export revenue of the BOI enterprises topped US $ 7.9 billion for the period from January to November 26, 2022. 

Taking a look at the statistics related to merchandise exports, data from the BOI Research and Policy Advocacy Department highlighted that all export items, except food, paper and horticultural products, had shown significant increases in the given period compared to the corresponding period in 2021. Accordingly, wearing apparel (excluding leather garments) exports grew 8 percent to US $ 4,591.86 million in 2022, compared to the US $ 4,261.48 million in 2021, while rubber exports grew 3 percent to US $ 1,052 million.  Also, other manufactured product (N.E.S.) exports grew 112 percent to US $ 477 million, while PVC products grew 20 percent to US $ 100.54 million.

In addition, the export earnings from jewellery and lapidary increased by 16 percent to US $ 134.99 million in 2022, while leather products (including leather garments) grew 72 percent to US $ 16.32 million and footwear exports grew 146 percent to 2.6 million.  Apparel exports showed the highest earnings in 2022 while footwear exports showed the highest percentage in terms of growth.   The BOI enterprises account for over 65 percent of the country’s overall export earnings and 85 percent of the national industrial export earnings.