Hungary maintains a high per capita stock of foreign direct investment (FDI) for Central and Eastern Europe standards. However, the 2009-2010 crisis has strongly affected FDI flows to the country and since then the volume of inward FDI flows has been lower. According to UNCTAD's World Investment Report 2022, FDI inflows decreased to USD 5.4 billion in 2021 compared to USD 6.8 billion one year earlier; whereas the FDI stock stood at USD 101.7 billion. The main investors are Canada, the Cayman Islands, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and Austria. FDIs are mainly oriented towards financial services, manufacturing, trade, real estate, and scientific and technical activities. As per the Hungarian Promotion Agency, in 2021 investment projects reached an all-time high of 422 projects that created 13,883 new jobs.
In the same here, the South Korean Company SK Innovation launched Hungary's largest greenfield FDI project ever (worth EUR 1.9 billion) aimed at building a battery plant in Iváncsa. According to the latest figures from OECD, in the first semester of 2021, Hungary welcomed an investment inflow of USD 1.1 billion, a drastic contraction compared to the level recorded in the same period one year earlier (USD 2.7 billion).