Foreign direct investment has seen increasing interest worldwide, especially in developing economies. However, statistics have shown that Yemen received fluctuating FDI inflows during the period under study. Against this background, this research seeks to determine the relationship and impact of interest rates on FDI flows. The study also found other determinants that greatly affected FDI inflows in Yemen for the period 1990-2018. Study data collected from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund databases. It also ensured that the time series were made balanced and interconnected, and then the Auto Regressive Distributed Lag method used in the analysis. The results showed that the interest rates and inflation rate harmed FDI flows and, therefore, could not be used for policymaking purposes. The research also discovered that GDP growth and trade openness are the main determinants of foreign direct investment in Yemen. Trade openness policies should be encouraged, and GDP growth facilitated if the economy is to achieve long-term FDI flows.

Purpose –The purpose of the paper is to discover the impact of interest rate on foreign direct investment with a combination of the exchange rate, inflation, gross domestic product, and trade openness.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper implements the Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL)-Bounds testing approach to analyze maintaining the time series properties in terms of stationarity.

Findings – The results indicate that there is a long-run equilibrium between the Foreign Direct Investment and the explanatory variables. Furthermore, the significant factors influencing, positively, FDI in Yemen are Growth domestic product, Exchange rate, and Trade openness. In contrast, both the Interest rate and Inflation rate have a substantial negative impact on Foreign Direct Investment.

Practical implications – Policymakers in Yemen advised reconsidering many of the general state policies, including investment policies, financial and administrative governance, and monetary policy that focuses on maintaining an adequate interest rate and reduce the rate of inflation.

Originality/value – As for the case of Yemen, this the first study empirically explores the impact of interest rate and the foreign direct investment using the Auto Regressive Distributed Lag method aiming for more reliable results.