The nation will remain one of the main recipients of foreign direct investment (FDI) this year despite a sharp year-on-year decline in April, analysts have said.

Last month's FDI was $5.89 billion, down 22.51 percent from a year earlier, Dow Jones reported yesterday. The Ministry of Commerce refused to confirm the report but experts said the figure would not be far off the mark.

Due largely to the global financial crisis, FDI has contracted for seventh months in a row, and the decline in April is markedly sharper than March, when it fell 9.5 percent.