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Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)
Table III.1 Eurasian Economic Union: inflows of FDI from the LAC region, by type of origin, 2015-2019 (Millions of dollars and percentages) Absolute value
National share
(millions of dollars) Armenia Belarus Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan Russian Federation EAEU
LAC LAC offshore LAC LAC offshore LAC LAC offshore LAC LAC offshore LAC LAC offshore LAC LAC offshore TOTAL
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
29.1 3.4 0.0 1.7 -4.7 118.7 0.0 0.0 22.8 5 190.2 47.2 5 314.0 5 361.2
8.4 3.7 0.0 0.6 8.6 -123.7 0.1 0.0 19.7 5 805.2 36.8 5 685.8 5 722.6
7.5 0.2 0.0 4.1 2.3 43.7 0.0 0.0 3.4 6 288.3 13.2 6 336.3 6 349.5
7.7 0.9 0.0 2.2 -25.7 99.3 0.1 0.0 -9.1 1 034.0 -27.0 1 136.4 1 109.4
15.7 0.2 0.0 0.1 -0.6 119.1 0.0 0.0 -5.1 844.7 10.0 964.1 974.1
(percentages) 0.4 0.0 1.2 0.0 98.3 100.0
Source: Prepared by the authors, on the basis of official sources.
As for EAEU investment in the LAC region, box III.1 raises some data challenges, especially in relation the insufficient disaggregation of origin data. Furthermore, certain countries that have received substantial flows from EAEU countries do not present geographically disaggregated data at all. As a result, it is difficult to identify officially recorded FDI inflows from EAEU. Only in the case of Ecuador is it possible to identify that between 2010 and the third quarter of 2019, 0.1% of inflows are attributable to the Russian Federation (US$ 3.9 million in total). However, while official data may be scarce, other sources can help identify certain trends. Clearly, the presence of EAEU companies in the LAC region is still relatively limited, but they are present in a small number of sectors, primarily focused on natural resources. With some caveats38, the data from fDi Markets records investment announcements. Between 2003 and 2018, a total of 105 investment announcements were recorded from EAEU companies in the LAC region. Ninety percent of these announcements originated in the Russian Federation, and the remaining 10% are attributed to companies from Belarus. No investment announcements were recorded from Armenia, Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan. As shown in figure III.10, the two principal destinations are Brazil and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which each received 24 announcements. Whereas in Brazil, EAEU-based companies showed interest in a range of sectors, announced investments in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela are concentrated in the oil and gas sector and to a lesser degree, the automotive sector. The Minsk Automotive Plant (MAZ) of Belarus announced several investments in an assembly plant in Barinas, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. In the oil and gas sector, between 2003 and 2013, investments were announced by large companies from the Russian Federation, such as Gazprom, Lukoil and Rosneft.
38
These data refer to the announcement of investments, not considering whether they were eventually realized. Furthermore, the database is biased towards larger and publicly listed companies. Finally, since the numbers are relatively small, deviations in how announcements are recorded can significantly impact overall trends. Despite these considerations, the data can help to identify certain trends that may not otherwise be visible.
