Foreign Investment Review Board

Report 1997-98

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Main Points

Changes to Membership

• Mr Ken Stone, AO retired from the Board with effect from 31 March 1998.
• Mr Richard Murray succeeded Mr Tony Hinton as the Executive Member on 1 May 1998.

Proposals

• Foreign investment policy is applied with the objective of encouraging worthwhile foreign investment.
• Of the 4,375 proposals decided in 1997-98:
• 4,261 were approved (2,567 with conditions, mainly in the real estate sector) and 114 were rejected. This compared with 4,096 approvals (2,610 with conditions) and 105 rejections in 1996-97.
• During 1997-98 there were 14 divestiture orders.
• Approvals in 1997-98 involved proposed investment (either alone or in partnership with Australians) of around $79.5 billion. This represented a 35 per cent increase on the previous year’s approvals of $58.6 billion and was the highest level to date. Approvals do not necessarily mean investments proceed.
• Compared to 1996-97, approvals increased; for services excluding tourism) from $13.9 billion to $19.5 billion, for real estate from $11.4 billion to $16.3 billion, for mineral exploration and development $4.8 billion to $8.6 billion and for manufacturing from $21.2 billion to $23.5 billion
• The 224 largest proposals (each with proposed investment of more than $50 million) accounted for about $64 billion or 80 per cent of total proposed investment.
• Investors from the United States doubled their proposed investment in Australia compared to the previous year. United States total proposed investment in relation to approvals increased from $18.0 billion in 1996-97 to $36.3 billion in 1997-98. As a percentage of total proposed investment by all countries, United States proposed investment increased from 30 per cent to 45 per cent.

Download Foreign Investment Review Board Report 1997-98 in either portable document (PDF) or rich text (RTF) format, or compressed (zipped) versions. Read the report online by clicking on the chapter links in the table below.

	PDF	RTF
Complete document	194kB	183kB
Main Points	7kB	49kB
Chapter 1: Foreign Investment Review Board	33kB	76kB
Chapter 2: Foreign Investment Proposals	61kB	247kB
Chapter 3: Aggregate Foreign Investment	20kB	279kB
Appendix A: Summary of Australian's Foreign Investment Policy as at December 1998	29kB	64kB
Appendix B: Legislation, Policy Statements and Publications	13kB	42kB
Appendix C: Press Releases - 1997-98	6kB	29kB
Appendix D: Chronology of Policy Measures	22kB	29kB
Appendix E: The Foreign Investment Review Board Service Charter	13kB	42kB
Appendix F: The Executive: Contact Names	13kB	42kB