KARACHI - Singapore has become the single largest investor in Pakistan in first five months of 2008-09, accounting for 19.8% of the total foreign direct investment. The United States and the United Kingdom remained the second and the third largest investor countries in Pakistan. According to an analysis of Finance Ministry on the inflow of foreign investment from July-Nov FY09, the financial businesses along with communications have been the major attraction for foreign investors in Pakistan, accounting for 27.7% and 24.2% respectively, followed by energy sector (oil & gas, petroleum refining and power) (23.5%), trade (4.4%) and personal services (3.0%). Foreign investment continued to perform impressively during the current fiscal year (2008-09) and is likely to be in the range of last fiscal's foreign investment of $5.1 billion. Ministry said the total foreign investment amounted to $1440.4 million in July- November, 2008 against $ 1818.4 million in the corresponding period of last year, thus, showing a decline of 20.8%. However, further break down of foreign investment as reported in table below shows that foreign direct investment (FDI) amounted to $ 1603.3 million during July-November, 2008 as against $ 1712.4 in the same period last year showing a negative growth of 6.4% in the presence of the ongoing international financial crises. However, when privatisation proceeds of $ 133.2 million are excluded from last year's (July-November) figure of $ 1712.4 million the remaining amount comes to $1579.2 million - almost 24 million less than during the same period in the current year. In other words, excluding privatisation proceeds, the FDI for first five months (July-November) of the current fiscal year registered a marginal increase of 1.5 percent in the midst of worst international financial crises in almost eight decades. Furthermore, as expected, total portfolio investment registered an outflow of $ 146.1million (July-November, 2008) as against an inflow of $ 50.4m during July- November of fiscal year 2007-08 - a decline of over $ 196.5m due to the on-going liquidity and credit crunch in global financial markets.