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Investment abroad. By geographical areas

Investment abroad. By geographical areas Catalonia. 2022
Value Variation (%)
Total 774.1 -61.9
OECD 356.3 -74.4
European Union (EU-27) 198.3 -76.2
North America 130.8 -75.2
Latin America 270.9 -35.2
Rest of America 0.7 -81.3
Asia and Oceania 4.0 -95.4
Africa 162.0 253.2
Tax havens 9.8 -15.4
Units: Millions of euros.
Source: Idescat, based on data from the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism.
Note: Provisional data.
Investment abroad. By geographical areas Spain. 2022
Value Variation (%)
Total 31,202.8 7.3
OECD 27,148.8 6.9
European Union (EU-27) 10,218.1 13.7
North America 5,025.8 -11.7
Latin America 3,823.4 -21.7
Rest of America 23.6 -13.4
Asia and Oceania 1,365.1 109.8
Africa 210.2 99.4
Tax havens 45.5 18.0
Units: Millions of euros.
Source: Idescat, based on data from the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism.
Note: Provisional data.

Last update: September 27, 2023.

Quarterly data

Methodological note

The definition of direct foreign investment basically follows the recommendations of the International Monetary Fund (5th Balance of Payments Manual) and the OCDE (Benchmark Definition).

The data is based on that declared by investors pursuant to Act 19/2003, dated 4 July, on the legal system for capital movements and economic transactions abroad and measures to prevent money laundering, and the regulations that further implement it (Royal Decree 664/1999, Ministerial Order dated 28 May 2001 and Ministerial Ruling dated 21 February 2002). They do not include financing between companies, reinvested profits (save in the case of capitalisation of loans and/or profits) and investment in real estate.

Gross investment includes direct investment declared to the Foreign Investment Registry (FIR) of non-residents which entails:

  • holdings in unlisted companies domiciled abroad
  • holdings in listed companies domiciled abroad (over 10% of capital)
  • setting up or expansion of branches
  • other forms of investment contracts or entities registered abroad (foundations, cooperatives, economic interest groups), in which the invested capital exceeds EUR 1,502,530.26

Excluded from the data are foreign share holding companies (ETVEs). ETVEs are holding companies set up in Spain whose sole purpose is to hold shares in companies located abroad.

Foreign investment is obtained from official data published by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism from the Statistics on Foreign Investment in Spain and Spanish Investment Abroad. The data are provisional, given that in the corresponding quarterly updates, information referring to previous periods is modified as a result of operations which were declared in the last period but carried out prior to this.

For each new period published, Idescat updates and reviews the information published by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism for the last 10 years.