Foreign Investment Review Board
Report 1999-2000

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Main Points

Changes to Membership

• There were no changes to the membership of the Board during 1999-2000.

Proposals

• Of the 4,003 proposals decided in 1999-2000:
• 3,907 were approved (2,737 with conditions, mainly in the real estate sector) and 96 were rejected. There were 4,754 approvals (2,918 with conditions) and 112 rejections in 1998-99.

• During 1999-2000 there were 8 divestiture orders.
• Approvals in 1999-2000 involved proposed investment (either alone or in partnership with Australians) of around $78.0 billion. This represented a 16 per cent increase on the previous year’s approvals of $67.0 billion. Approvals do not necessarily mean investments proceed.
• The value of approvals increased in the services sector (excluding tourism) from $22.6 billion in 1998-99 to $25.0 billion in 1999-2000. Approvals for manufacturing increased from $16.5 billion to $21.7 billion and for real estate declined from $11.2 billion to $9.5 billion. After a sharp decline in the tourism sector in 1998-99, the value of approvals increased from $1.1 billion to $2.4 billion in 1999-2000.

• The 221 largest proposals (each with proposed investment of more than $50 million) accounted for about $68.4 billion or about 87 per cent of total proposed investment.
• The United States remained the largest source of proposed foreign investment in Australia during 1999-2000 accounting for around 38 per cent of the total. The other major source of proposed foreign investment was the United Kingdom, its proposed investment in Australia remained steady at $11.5 billion in 1999-2000 or 15 per cent of the total. The next largest contributors of proposed foreign investment in Australia during 1999-2000 were Singapore, Hong Kong and South Africa with proposed investments valued at $5.2 billion, $4.1 billion and $3.1 billion, respectively.

Download Foreign Investment Review Board Report 1999-2000 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
Main Points	16kB	55kB
Chapter 1: Foreign Investment Review Board	50kB	100kB
Chapter 2: Foreign Investment Proposals	102kB	291kB
Chapter 3: Aggregate Foreign Investment	29kB	148kB
Appendix A: Summary of Australia's Foreign Investment Policy	70kB	153kB
Appendix B: Legislation, Policy Statements and Publications	23kB	44kB
Appendix C: Press Releases - 1999-2000	11kB	29kB
Appendix D: Chronology of Policy Measures	44kB	73kB
Appendix E: OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises	50kB	88kB
Appendix F: The Executive - Contact Names	14kB	35kB