JEDDAH: The UAE topped the list of Arab League countries receiving foreign direct investment (FDI) last year with $10.1 billion — 23 percent of the total — followed by Saudi Arabia with $8 billion (SR30 billion), or 18.3 percent.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia attracted close to half the total FDI funds, the Kuwait-based Arab Investment and Export Credit Guarantee Corp. said in its report.

The GCC states drew in the most investment, accounting 49.7 percent of the Arab world’s total FDI, according to the report.

It said that total FDI in the Arab world reached $789 billion by the end of 2014, just 4.0 percent of the world’s total of $26 trillion.

Saudi Arabia came on top with $216 billion (SR810 billion) followed by UAE with $116 billion and Egypt with $88 billion.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar have embarked on ambitious plans with special focus on railway projects where in 2013 more than $30 billion contracts were awarded for Riyadh and Doha metro projects.

Of $157 billion contracts awarded by the GCC countries, companies in Saudi Arabia captured the highest portion of those deals at $66 billion, followed by the UAE ($52 billion), Qatar ($22 billion), Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman ($17 billion), earlier reports said.

Total FDI into Arab states dropped 8.0 percent last year.

The report covered 20 out of the 22 Arab League states, excluding Syria and tiny Comoros. FDI dropped in 15 of them.

Arab states attracted FDI worth $43.9 billion (40 billion euros) in 2014 compared with $47.5 billion the previous year

The figure is still way below the $66.2 billion attracted in 2010 before the start of the Arab Spring uprisings in several countries.

Outflows of Arab investments into other countries last year dropped 10 percent to $33.4 billion, with Kuwait topping the list with $13 billion or 39.2 percent of the total, the report said.