ATHENS, July 17 -- Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into Greece last year amounted to 4.5 billion euros (some 4.92 billion U.S. dollars), a record high since 2000, according to a report presented Wednesday at the ongoing 7th InvestGR Forum.

Despite challenges Greece remains an increasingly attractive destination for investment, said the Ernst & Young's "Attractiveness Survey Greece 2024" report.

According to the survey, 51 percent of the 250 CEOs and managers respondents said they planned to invest or expand their activities in Greece in 2025, compared to 40 percent in 2022 and 30 percent in 2019 when Greece was emerging from an acute decade-long debt crisis.

In addition, 69 percent of the respondents said that they expected Greece's attractiveness to further rise in the next three years thanks to the country's geostrategic position, improving infrastructure and the government's policies to facilitate investments.

"The government implements a policy that consistently combines fiscal discipline on the one hand with a policy that is friendly to entrepreneurship and investment on the other," Kostis Hatzidakis, minister of national economy and finance, told Xinhua during the forum.

"I believe that Greece is one of the European countries that any investor should consider very seriously for investments of any kind," he added.

Addressing the forum, Takis Theodorikakos, development minister, acknowledged that there were challenges Greece must address to continue attracting investments, such as high interest rates, public debt and high inflation.

  - Xinhua