Nicosia, Cyprus. Cyprus ranked among the European Union’s lowest-performing countries for business investment in 2024, recording an investment rate of 16%, according to Eurostat.
Cyprus rate and EU comparison
Eurostat said the 16% figure placed Cyprus alongside Ireland at the lower end of the bloc, well below higher-performing EU economies.
What the business investment rate measures
In business terms, the investment rate measures a company’s “plough-back” ratio, indicating the share of operating profits, measured as Gross Value Added, spent on capital expenditures such as machinery, technology and buildings rather than distributed or saved.
EU business investment at lowest level since 2015
Across the European Union, the business investment rate for non-financial corporations stood at 21.8% in the fourth quarter of 2025, the lowest level since the third quarter of 2015. Eurostat said the figures reflect a broader downward trend in corporate investment across the bloc in recent years.
Trends since 2014
Eurostat data shows that since 2014 the EU’s non-financial corporation investment rate has followed two distinct patterns. Between 2014 and 2018, it increased steadily from 22% to nearly 24%. From 2021 onwards, the trend reversed, with investment rates declining almost continuously to 21.8% by the fourth quarter of 2025.
Factors behind earlier spikes
Eurostat attributed earlier increases in investment to surges in intellectual property imports in certain countries linked to globalisation dynamics. It said sharp increases in the second quarter of 2015, 2017 and 2019, followed by a similar trend in the fourth quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of 2020, were largely driven by those imports.
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