TBILISI, March 11 (Xinhua) -- Preliminary data showed that the inflow of foreign direct investments (FDI) to Georgia in 2018 amounted to 1.23 billion U.S. dollars, down 34.9 percent year on year, according to Gogita Todradze, executive director of the National Statistics Office of Georgia on Monday.

At a news briefing in Tbilisi, Todradze attributed the sharp decrease of FDI in 2018 to the completion of a major pipeline project, transferring of ownership in some big companies and reduction in liabilities to non-resident direct investors.

According to the report released at the briefing, Azerbaijan, Britain and the Netherlands ranked the top three largest investors for Georgia, with 240 million dollars, 203 million dollars and 167 million dollars, respectively, in the year of 2018.

Meanwhile, one of the fast growing investors, China, ranked as the seventh largest investor for Georgia with 65 million dollars of investments in 2018.

Data also showed that financial sector attracted 277 million dollars of investments, the biggest portion of FDI last year.