WINNIPEG, Jan. 25 (MarketsFarm) – The following is a glance at the news moving markets in Canada and globally.

– A report released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) on Jan. 24 revealed that foreign direct investment (FDI) fell by 42 per cent in 2020 from US$1.5 billion to US$859 million. The two major reasons cited for the decline was the COVID-19 pandemic and uncertainty in global investment policy. Developed economies were hit hardest as FDI in the United States dropped by 49 per cent to US$134 billion, primarily in wholesale trade, financial services and manufacturing. Canada’s FDI went down by 34 per cent to US$32 billion as multinational enterprises from the U.S. cut half of their investments north of the border. China bucked the trend in 2020, where FDI in that nation increased by four per cent to US$163 billion, overtaking the U.S. for top spot globally. The report expected inflows from FDI to remain weak in 2021 but also expects an uneven recovery this year.

– Rescue efforts continued two weeks after an explosion caused a tunnel collapse at a gold mine in China on Jan. 10. Earlier today, the bodies of 10 miners were recovered after 11 others were rescued and brought to the surface the day before. Another miner was rescued on Jan. 21. One of the rescue workers told state-sponsored Global Times that the rescue was supposed to take longer to execute but a blockage fell to the bottom of the shaft on Jan. 24, easing access to the miners.

– Jan. 25 marks one year since the first lab-confirmed case of COVID-19 was found in Canada from a woman in Toronto who had visited Wuhan, China, the then-epicentre of the initial outbreak. Since then, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), there have been 747,383 lab-confirmed cases of the virus in Canada. In total, 19,094 Canadians have lost their lives to COVID-19.