Russian Foreign Direct Investment Rose to $18.4 Billion in 2011

Russian foreign direct investment soared to $18.4 billion last year, a 33 percent increase from 2010, with finance and manufacturing receiving the most capital.

Total foreign investment, including loans and flows into securities markets, surged 66 percent last year to $190.6 billion, the Federal Statistics Service in Moscow said today in an e-mailed statement.

The Kremlin set up the Russian Direct Investment Fund to co-finance international investment and in October won $1 billion in backing from China’s sovereign wealth fund, the first foreign commitment to the private-equity vehicle. The government expects inflows to reach between $60 billion and $70 billion soon, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last year.

The financial industry received the largest amount of investments in 2011, attracting $86.9 billion, followed by manufacturing and mining. Cyprus was the largest foreign investor in the period, followed by the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Germany.

To contact the reporter on this story: Zoya Shilova in Moscow at zoya@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net