Romgaz acquiring offshore participation in Neptun Deep drags Romania’s FDI down

Romgaz completing in August the takeover of the Bahamas-registered ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Romania Limited for nearly EUR 1 bln reversed the direction of net FDI and made Romania a net foreign investor as the FDI outflows surpassed the inflows.

This happens very rarely and almost all the time as a result of accounting effects - reinvested profits registered at different dates and flows of loans between foreign investors and local subsidiaries.

In August, the investments of Romanian residents abroad amounted to EUR 946 mln, while the investments of foreign residents in Romania were only EUR 849 mln.

As a result, the 12-month FDI to Romania dropped to EUR 9.88 bln in August from EUR 10.57 bln in July and EUR 5.83 bln as of August 2021. Of this, genuine FDI - namely equity investments - were only EUR 117 mln. The rest was either reinvested profits (EUR 5.39 bln) or loans taken by local subsidiaries of foreign groups (EUR 4.37 bln).

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