June 22 (SeeNews) - Austrian companies show serious interest towards investing in Serbia, given the geographical proximity of the two countries, the president of the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber, Christoph Leitl, has said.
The chambers of commerce of the two countries have a very good cooperation, which encourages investments, Leitl said in a video file posted on the website of Serbian news agency Tanjug on Wednesday.
"Many Serbian companies have invested in Austria and many Austrian firms invest in Serbia. We speak of good investments. This means mutual trust," Leitl said.
The Serbian Chamber of Commerce is active across Europe and already has presence in Shanghai and Dubai, which is a great success, he noted.
"Austrians started doing this after the end of World War II and now our foreign trade network has 110 points worldwide. We are confident that Serbia will manage to do this much faster than Austria," Leitl added.
The net inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) into Serbia rose to 1.861 billion euro ($2.079 billion) in 2016, from 1.804 billion euro in the previous year, official figures show.
The Netherlands was the largest source of FDI into Serbia, with a total of 276.6 million euro in 2016, followed by Austria and Luxembourg, with 256.3 million euro and 252.2 million euro, respectively.
($ = 0.89502 euro)