Foreign direct investments (FDI) from the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) into the European Union jumped to more than EUR63bn ($78.9bn) in 2008, according to latest figures from the EU’s statistical office Eurostat.
The FDI total was a huge increase on the EUR2.3bn ($2.88bn) invested in 2007, Eurostat’s report showed.
At the same time, EU investments in the GCC went up from EUR4.6bn in 2007 to EUR18.9bn in 2008, KUNA News Agency reported.
A spokesperson for Eurostat told KUNA that the latest figures available were for 2008.
The largest GCC investments were made in Luxembourg with EUR59.3bn.
The biggest GCC investor in Luxembourg was the UAE (EUR58.5bn) followed by Qatar (EUR641m), Saudi Arabia (EUR134m), Bahrain (EUR110m) and Kuwait with EUR23m.
The report said the largest investments in the GCC were made by Luxembourg at EUR12.7bn, followed by Denmark with EUR1bn, the UK (EUR867m) France (EUR711m) and Germany with EUR236m.
The Eurostat report noted that FDI inflows from outside the EU in 2008 were worth only half of what they had been a year before.
“The drop would have been even more significant without a major inflow from Gulf Arabian countries to Luxembourg,” it noted.
FDI from the GCC made up 31.8 percent of total FDI inflows into the EU in 2008, the second-biggest by a regional bloc. FDI worth EUR65.8bn from North America to the EU made up 33.1 percent.
