The real economy is increasingly poorly financed given thatforeign direct investment has halved in the first quarter to 754million euros, two thirds of which went to the banking sectoralone, where the money is not fuelling loans but only allows banksto 'stomach' losses caused by uncollected financing granted in thepast.
With the state unable to find funds to help the real economy andbankers saying that resurrection of lending is hindered by the lackof demand, foreign investment remains the only hope for financingable to bring back growth. NBR data, however, show that this streamis narrowing, too.
Foreign direct investment totalled merely 754 million euros inthe first quarter, half the level in the same time of 2009.Moreover, most of these amounts went to the financial sector, giventhat banks alone absorbed half a billion euros to boost equitycapitals in the first quarter. The data is not part of a uniformreport, so an exact comparison is not possible.
Banks increased their equity capitals by 500 million euros in2009, while foreign direct investment stood at 4.9 billion euros.
