Institutional investors, including sovereign wealth funds, entered the pandemic with high levels of cash, said the report. Consequently, they were ready to support local economies or buy opportunistically in distressed international markets in March 2020.
Sovereign funds made $48.6bn in direct equity investments, more than twice the amount deployed in 2019, while $9.1bn was invested in real estate and $8.2bn in infrastructure, the report said.
Many sovereign funds were required to support domestic businesses in the pandemic s wake in 2020. Examples include Turkey s fund injecting 21bn lira ($2.5bn) into three state banks and Singapore s Temasek Holdings supporting a $1.5bn rights issue by Sembcorp Marine.
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Tunisia s biggest political party assembled tens of thousands of supporters in the capital on Saturday in a show of strength that could fuel a dispute between the president and the prime minister.
In one of the biggest demonstrations since Tunisia s 2011 revolution, Ennahda supporters marched through central Tunis chanting The people want to protect institutions! and The people want national unity! .
The dispute has played out against a grim backdrop of economic anxiety, disillusionment with the democratic process and competing reform demands from foreign lenders and the UGTT, the powerful main labour union, as debt repayments loom.
Ennahda, led by Parliament Speaker Rached Ghannouchi, has backed Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi in a stand-off with President Kais Saied over a cabinet reshuffle.