SEOUL: Foreign direct investment (FDI) into the South Korean economy posted a double-digit decline in the first half of this year, logging less than 10 billion U.S. dollars, a government report showed Wednesday.
The reported FDI reached 8.87 billion dollars during the January-June period, down 14.2 percent from the same period of last year, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy.
The FDI kept rising from 5.36 billion dollars in the first half of 2011 and peaked at 10.33 billion dollars in the first half of 2014 before turning downward in 2015.
The ministry said the 2015 figure was the second-largest among all first-half FDIs, noting that the upward trend has been maintained given that one-off factors sharply increased the 2014 figure.
Foreign direct investment turned upward on a quarterly basis. The second-quarter FDI was 5.32 billion dollars, up 0.8 percent from a year earlier and up 49.9 percent from the previous quarter.
