China put in $219.5m and Britain $123.5m in one quarter

Equity contributed USD 210.5 million of the quarter, or 44.9%, and reinvested earnings USD 300.5 million, or 64.1%. The two shares add to more than the total, which means the remaining component was negative — in practice, repayment of intercompany debt. The decline is attributed mainly to lower reinvestment, and that is the number worth watching rather than the headline. Equity is a decision to come in; reinvestment is a decision by firms already here to keep their profits in the country rather than send them home. A fall in the second tells you something about how existing investors read the next two years.

Real estate activities took USD 119.9 million, 25.6% of the quarter, behind finance and insurance at USD 207.6 million and ahead of manufacturing at USD 59.0 million. For anyone selling or developing here, that is the single most relevant line in the statistics: a quarter of all foreign capital entering the country is arriving through property. It is also a reminder of how narrow the base is. A sector taking a quarter of a USD 469 million quarter is taking roughly USD 120 million — the size of one large project, not of a market with many buyers.

China at 46.8%, the UK at 26.3% and the UAE at 10.2% leave under a fifth of the quarter for everyone else. Concentration like that cuts both ways. It means a single large transaction or a single investor's change of plan moves the national figure, which is one reason quarterly FDI here is volatile and why reading a trend from one quarter is a mistake. It also means the composition of who is investing is shifting faster than the totals suggest, and a developer pricing for a buyer profile that reflects the investor mix of three years ago is pricing for a market that has partly moved on.