BEIJING (Oct 16): China's year-to-date foreign direct investment inflows declined for a third month in September, indicating investor caution amid a further slowdown in the world's second-largest economy.

Investment for the month of September rose from a year earlier, however, after a sharp drop in August.

In September, China attracted $9.0 billion in FDI, up 1.9 percent from a year earlier, the ministry said. That compared with a 14 percent slide in August to $7.2 billion, a level not seen since February 2012.

That left China with $87.4 billion of FDI in the first nine months of 2014, down 1.4 percent from a year earlier.

FDI is an important gauge of the health of the external economy, to which China's vast factory sector is oriented, but it is a small contributor to overall capital flows compared with exports, which were worth about $2 trillion in 2013.

Commerce Ministry spokesman Shen Danyang said last month that China's FDI may hit an all-time high of $120 billion this year, barring no sharp changes in global capital flows.

Data from the ministry showed China's services sector attracted $48.6 billion of FDI in the first nine months of the year, up 8.7 percent from the same period last year, and faring much better than the manufacturing industry, where FDI dropped 16.5 percent to $29.6 billion.

The services sector appears to be holding up relatively well despite the cooling economy, while manufacturing has been weighed down by erratic exports, excess capacity in some sectors and a slumping property market, which is hurting demand for everything from glass and furniture to cement and steel.

Among the 10 countries that were the biggest sources of China's FDI, investment from South Korea surged 32.5 percent on an annual basis and that from Britain leapt 32.3 percent.

In contrast, investment from Japan plunged 43 percent from a year earlier while FDI from the United States and European Union dropped 24.7-18.8 percent, respectively.

China's non-financial direct outbound investment rose 21.6 percent in the first nine months from a year earlier to $75 billion.

The Commerce Ministry said it expects China's FDI to remain on a stable trend this year during the conference Thursday, and for outbound investment to maintain its pace of relatively fast growth.