GENEVA (TIP): Developing countries overtook their traditionally wealthier counterparts in attracting foreign direct investment for the first time last year, as industrialised nations bore the brunt of an 18 per cent plunge in FDI flows, the UN’s trade and investment think tank UNCTAD said on Wednesday. Last year, global foreign direct investments — when a company in one country invests for instance in production facilities or buys a business in another country — came in at USD 1.3 trillion, down from USD 1.6 trillion in 2011, UNCTAD’s Global Investment Trend Monitor showed. In a dramatic shift on the global investment scale, developing countries reaped USD 680 billion of that, or 52 per cent of the total. “For the first time in history, developing countries have attracted more investment than developed countries,” James Zhan, who head’s UNCTAD’s investment and enterprise division, told reporters in Geneva.