Hungary To Top Site Selection Magazine’s Regional FDI Country Ranking
2023. 05. 04.
The prestigious US-based Site Selection Magazine released its Global Best To Invest rankings for the 15th time this year, and Hungary finished first among the countries of the Eastern European region. Local city-level investment activities have also been recognized as both Budapest and Debrecen made top 5 in the Top Metros regional ranking.
Site Selection is the professional magazine of Conway Data, the world’s largest full-service firm in the economic development-investment promotion industry. It is among the most popular magazines on investment, investment site selection and economic development in the US.
The Global Best To Invest survey is published every May, and it is based on the Conway database of foreign direct investments. It also takes into consideration various international competitiveness rankings and development indices.
The annual Global Best to Invest rankings showcase the top countries and metro areas in terms of their outlook for corporate investment. This year in the Eastern European region, Hungary ranked first, followed by Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic. Being the ultimate driver behind attracting FDI, the Hungarian Investment Promotion Agency was named as a proxy for Hungary.
On the other hand, not only the country as such but also city-level FDI efforts have been recognized in Hungary. Budapest and Debrecen ranked among the top 5 metros in the region according to Site Selection Magazine, sharing the 5th place in the 2023 ranking. These regional metro rankings are based purely on the Conway Data Projects Database data.
HIPA CEO István Joó said.
HIPA closed 92 large FDI deals worth EUR 6.5 billion in 2022, new record in the history of Hungarian investment promotion. In total the creation of some 15,000 new jobs were announced and tens of thousands of workplaces were retained. South Korea maintained its leading position as largest investor as it invested the most on an annual basis in 2022 for the third time after 2019 and 2021. The Asian country provided nearly EUR 2.8 billion for investment purposes, with battery separator film manufacturer W-Scope alone having invested EUR 720 million. The geographical origin of inflowing FDI, in turn, is balanced since 48% and 42% of investments stemmed from the East and the West, respectively.
