The impact of credits to the private sector and FDI on the economic growth in ASEAN
The paper examines the impact of credits to private sector and foreign direct investment (FDI) flows on the economic growth of ASEAN countries in the period 1995-2017. The paper also validates the capital spread of FDI inflows to economic growth through credits to private sector. Using fixed effect estimation method (FEM), random effect (REM) and generalized least square (GLS) for panel data, we found that FDI inflows are positvely correlated with the economic growth of the ASEAN countries. This once again confirms the role of FDI in promoting the economic growth as evidenced in previous studies. Meanwhile, credits to private sector exert a negative impact on the economic growth in these countries which is an interesting finding given that few studies yield a similar result. To assess the spillover effect of FDI to growth through credits to private sector, we augment our model with a variable that reflects the interaction between credits to private sector and FDI. This variable is negative and statistically significant, suggesting that FDI is yet to show its positive impact on growth through spreading capital to credits to privatte sector.