Foreign Investment Review Board

Report 1998-99

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Main Points

Changes to Membership

• Mr Graham Maguire retired from the Board and was replaced by the Hon. Chris Miles.

• Ms Janine Murphy succeeded Mr Richard Murray as the Executive Member.

Proposals

• Foreign investment policy is applied with the objective of encouraging worthwhile foreign investment.

• Of the 4,754 proposals decided in 1998-99:

• 4,642 were approved (2,918 with conditions, mainly in the real estate sector) and 112 were rejected. There were 4,261 approvals (2,567 with conditions) and 114 rejections in 1997-98.

• During 1998-99 there were 5 divestiture orders.

• Approvals in 1998-99 involved proposed investment (either alone or in partnership with Australians) of around $67.0 billion. This represented a 16 per cent decrease on the previous year’s approvals of $79.5 billion. Approvals do not necessarily mean investments proceed.

• The value of approvals increased for services (excluding tourism) from $19.5 billion in 1997-98 to $22.6 billion in 1998-99. Approvals for manufacturing declined from $23.5 billion to $16.5 billion and for real estate from $16.3 billion to $11.2 billion. The sharpest decline in percentage terms was in the tourism sector experiencing a 70 per cent fall in the value of approvals from $3.6 billion to $1.1 billion.

• The 206 largest proposals (each with proposed investment of more than $50 million) accounted for about $53.4 billion or about 80 per cent of total proposed investment.

The United States was the most important source of proposed foreign investment in Australia during 1998-99 accounting for around 44 per cent of the total. The other major source of proposed foreign investment was the United Kingdom, increasing its investment in Australia from $8.4 billion in 1997-98 to $12.7 billion in 1998-99 or 19 per cent of the total.

Download Foreign Investment Review Board Report 1998-99 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	242kB	172kB
Main Points	7kB	49kB
Chapter 1: Foreign Investment Review Board	36kB	87kB
Chapter 2: Foreign Investment Proposals	84kB	255kB
Chapter 3: Aggregate Foreign Investment	18kB	145kB
Appendix A: Summary of Australian's Foreign Investment Policy	50kB	131kB
Appendix B: Legislation, Policy Statements and Publications	13kB	43kB
Appendix C: Press Releases - 1998-99	4kB	29kB
Appendix D: Chronology of Policy Measures	24kB	57kB
Appendix E: Press Release - Foreign Investment Policy Changes	15kB	42kB
Appendix F: Executive:   Contact Names	6kB	31kB