Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has welcome further investment into the country’s data centre industry as the economy bounces back from the Covid-19 pandemic and readies for a 4.5% growth in 2022, the government’s draft budget shows.

Attending the breaking ground ceremony of Digital Realty’s (NYSE: DLR) Lamda Hellix future Athens-3 facility, the head of government said: “We are very happy when large foreign companies choose to invest in Greece. It is not only Digital Realty that has done so. However, this is also a vote of confidence in the overall momentum of the Greek economy.”

Mitsotakis continued adding that data centres are a vertical in which the country has already achieved much in terms of providing services to citizens and businesses.

“I am especially happy every time a Greek citizen, a businessperson, recognises how many work-hours have been saved because they can now have access to key services from a computer or mobile phone, instead of going to a civil service department,” he said.

The new data centre located in Koropi, to the southeast of the Greek capital, will cater to 20MW of IT load, 92,500 sq ft of space, and once fully developed will become Greece’s largest facility.

The first phase of the US$80 million development will deliver 6.8MW of power expected to be brought online by December 2022.

Lamda Hellix is also said to have submitted plans for a fourth facility to be built in Athens, with prime minister Mitsotakis saying he hopes that “Athens 4 will follow very soon”.

Speaking of Greece’s open door policy on foreign investment, he added: “A country that has launched, thanks to the initiatives of the Digital Governance Ministry, our great digital transformation so that we are now able to attract such investments and become a country that can accept infrastructure investments for the new digital economy.”

Apostolos Kakkos, president and CEO of Lamda Hellix, said: “I am happy because Athens 3 will not just be a new data centre, it is the largest data centre in Greece, part of the largest hub in Southeast Europe and is the way with which we have a positive influence, accelerating the digital transformation of Greece.”