Foreign investment fell 23%, and China supplied almost half of what came

Total inward investment of USD 468.8 million in the quarter is 23.2% below the same quarter a year earlier on adjusted figures. The more interesting line is who provided it. China at USD 219.5 million is nearly half the quarter on its own, the United Kingdom adds USD 123.5 million and the United Arab Emirates USD 47.7 million. A single quarter can be moved by one or two large transactions, so the country ranking says more about what closed in those three months than about a durable shift in who invests here.

Finance and insurance took the largest share at USD 207.6 million, or 44.3%. Real estate was second at USD 119.9 million, 25.6% of the quarter, and manufacturing third at USD 59.0 million. For anyone selling or developing property here, that second line is the one to watch across quarters rather than in isolation: it is the clearest published measure of how much outside capital is entering the sector, as distinct from local buyers moving between flats.

Three countries supplied 83.3% of the quarter's investment and three sectors 82.4% of it. That is a narrow base. It means the total is sensitive to decisions taken in a small number of places: if one of those three sources pauses, the headline figure moves sharply without anything changing in the domestic economy. A broader spread of smaller investors would produce a duller number and a steadier one.

These are preliminary figures and quarterly investment data are revised. A fall of this size in one quarter is also not the same as a fall in demand from individual foreign buyers, who mostly do not appear in this series at all: a flat bought by a private purchaser abroad is not usually counted as direct investment in the way a company's equity injection is. Read it as a measure of corporate capital, and read buyer demand off registry and sales data instead.