Foreign investments rebound but recovery uneven — UN
Worldwide foreign direct investment rose in 2025 after two years of decline, the United Nations said Tuesday, warning, though, that the recovery was “narrow, fragile and uneven”. Foreign direct investment (FDI) swelled by 6.0 per cent last year to $1.6 trillion, according to the UN Trade and Development agency UNCTAD.
But its World Investment Report 2026 stressed that the hike was lopsided, with 20 countries attracting more than 80 per cent of global FDI last year. And investment growth was concentrated in a few sectors, while in most sectors, new project activity was “subdued”, with heightened investor uncertainty, geopolitical tensions, and trade policy volatility, as well as the rising cost of capital and growing technological competition.
The FDI growth seen in 2025 “masks underlying fragility and disparities across countries, regions and sectors”, UN chief Antonio Guterres warned in the preface to the report. Describing “seismic shifts in the global investment landscape”, he pointed out that the investment expansion was “driven largely by a small number of megaprojects, particularly infrastructure related to artificial intelligence”.
UNCTAD’s report found that growth in project values was driven mainly by data centres, followed by oil and gas and semiconductors. “Most other sectors registered declines, including renewable energy, infrastructure, and manufacturing, showing how narrow the recovery remains,” the agency said.
