Countries that attracted most FDI, tourism revenues in 2017

LAHORE: Inaugurating the much-anticipated ‘Pakistan Banao Certificates’ scheme to attract investment from overseas Pakistanis, the government Thursday expressed its resolve to put the country on a path where it could not only attract maximum Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), but also emerge as a top tourism earner.

The global statistics in this regard are both fantastic and mind-boggling, but rattled badly by terrorism and violence of all sorts since 2001, Pakistan has to take a start from somewhere.

Top FDI attracting nations:

Research conducted by the “Jang Group and Geo Television Network” shows that while India had rested at 19th position at the end of 2017 by fetching FDI worth US$ 36.75 billion, Pakistan had stood at 59th rank by bagging FDI totaling $4.156 billion only.

Similarly, key Muslim nations like Iran, Turkey and Malaysia had respectively stood at 57th, 38th and 40th positions in this ranking. Turkey attracted FDI worth $14.37 billion, foreign investment worth $ 13.32 billion had greeted Malaysian shores and Iran could attract FDI to the tune of $5.033 billion.

According to the December 31, 2017 estimates of the CIA World Fact Book, following are the countries, including the Non-sovereign state of Hong Kong, which have succeeded in accumulating maximum FDI:

Netherlands (US$4.89 trillion), United States ($4.084 trillion), United Kingdom ($2.03 trillion), Hong Kong ($1.901 trillion), China ($1.514 trillion), Ireland ($1.48 trillion), Germany ($146 billion), Singapore ($128.5 billion), Switzerland ($123 billion), Belgium ($109.3 billion) and Canada ($104.5 billion).

Top tourism-earning nations in the world:

United States ($ 299 billion), Spain ($96 billion), France ($86 billion), Thailand ($81 billion), United Kingdom ($72 billion), Italy ($62 billion), Australia ($59 billion), Germany ($57 billion), Macao (China) earned $51 billion and Japan made $48 billion through tourism.

According to a report appearing in the “Economic Times” in January 2018, India had earned an income of USD 27 billion from Foreign Tourist Arrivals in the year 2017, an amount that is more than Pakistan’s total export earnings.

The Indian tourism sector is contributing 6.88 per cent to the country's total GDP, besides 12.36 per cent of the total employment in terms of jobs.

On the other hand, the travel and tourism sector in Pakistan had contributed Rs930.9 billion (roughly $6.64 billion) to the Pakistani economy in 2017, which was just 2.9 per cent of the country’s GDP.

According to government estimates, the travel and tourism sector generated 1,49 million jobs directly in 2017 and this forecast was expected to grow by 2.8 per cent in 2018 to 1.53 million. According to the World Tourism and Travel Council, the direct contribution of travel and tourism to Pakistan's GDP in 2016 was US$7.6 billion (PKR 793.0 billion), constituting 2.7 per cent towards the total GDP.

It is imperative to note that international tourism had contributed US$1340 billion to the world economy in 2017. The biggest share of that ended up in the pockets of Europe, with 39 per cent of the total. Not too surprising, since Europe also accounted for 52 per cent of the total number of international visitors.

Countries that succeeded in attracting most number of internationalvisitors/tourists till the end of 2017:

According to a report published by the World Tourism Organization,France attracted 86.9 million tourists, Spain (81.8 million), United States (76.9 million), China (60.7 million), Italy (58.3 million), Mexico (39.3 million), United Kingdom (37.7 million), Turkey (37.6 million), Germany (37.5 million) and Thailand (35.4 million)

According to the World Tourism Organization, following are the Top 10 countries that had spent most on international tourism for the year 2017:

China ($257.7 billion), United States ($135 billion), Germany ($89.1 billion), United Kingdom ($71.4 billion), France ($41.4 billion), Australia ($34.2 billion), Canada ($31.8 billion), Russia ($31.1 billion), South Korea ($30.6 billion) and Italy ($27.7 billion).