Hot money yields $3.1B net outflow

Foreign portfolio investments or “hot money” posted a net outflow of $1 billion in May, higher than the $749.84-million net outflow a year ago. 

The net outflow resulted from the $1.5-billion gross outflows and $486-million gross inflows for the month and was also larger than the net outflow of $660 million in April.

About 88.3 percent of investments were parked with Philippine Stock Exchange-listed securities pertaining mainly to property companies, holding firms, banks, retail companies and telecommunication firms, while the remaining 11.8 percent went to investments in peso government securities.

The United Kingdom, the United States, Singapore, Hong Kong and Luxembourg were the top five investor countries for the month.

This brought hot money transactions in the first five months to a $3.1-billion net outflow resulting from the $7.8-billion gross outflows and $4.7-billion gross inflows. This was larger compared to the $685-million net outflow recorded in the same period last year.