Member Article

The Central Bank of Montenegro has recently published a report on foreign direct investments (FDI) that have been made in Montenegro during the first three months of this year. This FDI total has amounted to EUR 223 million, thus presenting proof of noticeable growth in this sense when compared to last year's EUR 100 million over the same period of time.

Furthermore, if we were to look at the report in more detail, we can also notice that the list of top investor countries has gone through certain alterations. More precisely, after years of being the top investor in Montenegro, Russia has been replaced in first place by Norway, with a total of EUR 85 million in investments. Norway is followed by Italy with EUR 30.8 million and Hungary with approximately EUR 25 million of investments. Due to Norwegian and Hungarian data being confidential in this regard, there is no publicly known information on which exact areas are the ones in which the investments happened. However, in case of 2nd placed Italy, most of the money ended up being invested in Montenegrin domestic companies and banks. This year, Russia's ranking on the list dropped from no. 1 to no. 4, with most of the money going into real estate investments.

By looking at the position of countries in the SEE region, we can notice that Slovenia is the biggest investor in Montenegro, with approximately EUR 8 million of investments – almost all of which aimed at intercompany debts. Slovenia is then followed by Serbia's EUR 2.8 million and Bosnia & Herzegovina's EUR 786 000, as both countries mainly invested into Montenegrin real estate. The list of regional investments is then closed by Kosovo with approximately EUR 350 000 of investments, and Croatia and Macedonia, who made no significant investments in the first three months of this year.