Investment of foreign private capital in a developing country is purchased by payments from income, which results in an effective outflow of capital from the developing to the developed countries.
No estimates of the outflow of financial resources from developing countries are available on a comprehensive basis, but it has been estimated that in the late 1980s there was a net flow of funds from South to North of over $50 billion per year. In Latin America, foreign investors transferred one third of the profits within the first 5 years, between one half and two thirds in the second 5 years, and thereafter continue taking about 90%, converting the investment into a drain on, instead of contributing to, the monetary reserves of the country. Between 1982 and 1987, the imbalance was $190 billion outflow to $40 billion of external financing.