Portfolio investment assets held abroad by entities resident in Malta amounted to €10.2 billion as at the end of December 2008, according to provisional estimates published by the National Statistics Office this week.

The main country in which securities were invested at the end of December 2008 remained Turkey, as was the case in the preceding years, with total securities amounting to €3.0493 billion, accounting for 29.9 per cent of total securities.

Other notable destinations for security assets were Germany, accounting for 9.7 per cent of the total, followed by the United Kingdom (7.4 per cent), Italy (5.9 per cent) and the United States (5.1 per cent).

The Coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey is an annual exercise carried out by a number of countries under the patronage of the International Monetary Fund.

The exercise measures the market value of total security assets held abroad by entities resident in a particular country. This data, shown by instrument, is further broken down by country where the assets are invested.

Provisional figures for total securities as at the end of 2008 amounted to €10,189.6 million, a decrease of €506.2 million from the position prevailing at the end of 2007.

The main drop, amounting to €425.8 million, was registered in long-term debt securities, reaching a level of €9,371.4 million at the end of the year under review

The stock position of equity securities decreased by €89.1 million from that prevailing a year earlier, amounting to €809.2 million. On the other hand, short-term securities increased over the position shown at the end of 2007, to reach an amount of €9.2 million.