KUALA LUMPUR, July 24 (Xinhua) -- Malaysia's foreign direct investment (FDI) net inflows fell 12.77 percent year-on-year to 41 billion ringgit (10.08 billion U.S. dollars) in 2017, after reaching a new high of 47 billion ringgit in 2016, according to official statistics Tuesday.

Malaysian statistics department said in a statement, the FDI flows last year was mainly channeled in services sector (48.2 percent), particularly in real estate, financial and insurance or takaful (Islamic insurance); information and communication activities.

The mining and quarrying (31.2 percent) was the second contributor, followed by the manufacturing sector (15.7 percent).

Asia was the main driver for Malaysia's FDI, accounting for 63.5 percent of the total, followed by Europe and Africa.

Within Asia, China's Hong Kong SAR remained as the prominent investor with 7.5 billion ringgit, while China (6.9 billion ringgit) overtook Singapore as the second largest contributor.

According to the department chief statistician Mohd Uzir Mahidin, the expansion of FDI position to 570.3 billion ringgit in 2017 from 547.4 billion ringgit in 2016, was impelled by the continuous inflows of FDI.

"The FDI flows in Malaysia has been on the upward trend since 2001. However, the lower FDI flows in 2009 (5.1 billion ringgit) were largely due to global financial crisis," he said.

Meanwhile, Malaysia's direct investment abroad (DIA) also registered lower net outflows of 24.9 billion ringgit last year as compared with 33.2 billion ringgit in 2016.

According to the statistics department, the investment abroad was also channeled mainly in services (73.6 percent), followed by mining and quarrying (12 percent) and manufacturing (7.4 percent) sectors.

Investment in services sector was primarily in financial and insurance or takaful; and real estate activities.

In terms of region, Asia was the top destination for Malaysia's DIA flows, contributing half of the investment with 13.7 billion ringgit, followed by Americas and Europe.

For Asia region, net DIA flows were mainly to Singapore and Indonesia, while Turkmenistan replaced India as the third largest destination.

"The DIA position has been in the increasing momentum since 2001. However, since 2016, the position has been on the downward trend, due to lower DIA flows and stood at 525.2 billion ringgit in 2017," said Mohd Uzir. (1 ringgit equals to 0.25 U.S. dollar)