BUCHAREST, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) -- Foreign direct investment (FDI) rose by 29.44 percent in the first semester of this year, data revealed on Monday by the Romanian National Bank showed.
According to the central bank, non-residents' direct investment in Romania totaled 2.194 billion euros (2.479 U.S. dollars) in the first six months of 2018, compared with 1.695 billion euros registered in the same period of last year.
Among the total FDI, the equity investments, including the reinvested profits, reached 2.258 billion euros, while the inter-company loans generated net outflows worth 64 million euros, meaning that daughter companies in Romania paid the debts to their parent companies abroad.
Meanwhile, the number of new companies with foreign capital dropped by 2.73 percent year on year in the first half of this year, yet, the 2,858 newly-set up companies had a subscribed share capital of over 35.021 million dollars, higher by 9.29 percent, in comparison with the same semester of 2017, showed the data published earlier by the National Trade Register Office.
Foreign direct investment has contributed significantly to the Romanian economy while foreign companies employ a third of the private sector workforce in the eastern European country.
As many as 215,651 companies with foreign capital were set up between 1991 and 2017, with the total subscribed share capital of over 61.3 billion dollars. (1 euro=1.13 U.S. dollars)
