In contrast to the crisis-hit East Asian economies such as Thailand and Republic of Korea, which managed to improve their foreign direct investment inflows in 1998, India attracted only $2,258 millions by way of FDI last year which was down from the $3,351 millions the country attracted in 1997. This was disclosed in the World Investment Report (WIR) 99 of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) released worldwide.