ATHENS, Dec. 2 -- Film industry production can be turned into a vehicle of economic growth for debt laden Greece, contributing millions of euros in revenues annually and creating tens of thousands new job positions, said a study released on Tuesday.

According to the study by leading Athens-based think tank Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research (IOBE), Greek experts examined for the first time in recent years the economic impact of the film industry in the country and its potential.

The scope of their study was to determine the contribution of the film industry to the Greek economy, to analyse the obstacles to foreign film production in Greece and to quantify the potential economic benefits from removing these obstacles.

Creative and cultural industries, which include film and music production, TV-radio production and advertising production, contribute some 3 percent in the Greek GDP, employing about 110,000 people, according to 2013 data. Two years ago the number of employees working in the sector was almost double.

In the period 2010-2013, as all sectors of Greece's economy were hit hard by the debt crisis which threatened the country with default, the industry's revenues declined by about 14 percent each year, according to IOBE's estimates.

The potential to restore growth in the sector and support overall efforts to boost the national economy which just exited a six-year recession this year is remarkable, according to the experts.

The production of 20 Greek movies per year with average budget of 450,000 euros (about 562,500 U.S. dollars) could boost Greek GDP with 686 million euros and help create some 12,000 job positions, Professor Angelos Tsakanikas said, presenting the results of the study.

The benefits could multiply in the case of foreign productions filmed in Greece, taken into account the parallel significant promotion of Greece's tourism destinations through the films, IOBE experts said.

They pointed to recent Hollywood productions such as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001) and Mamma Mia (2008) which led to an average 15 percent increase of foreign visitors to the islands where the movies were filmed in coming years.

A most recent example is the Chinese production Beijing Love Story, which was filmed a few months ago on Santorini and helped make the island even more attractive for Chinese tourists this year, according to local hoteliers.

According to IOBE, one major foreign movie production worth 25 million euros filmed in Greece could contribute about 39 million euros to the local economy and create 755 job positions, excluding the revenues and job positions from the increased flow of tourists.

In order to attract more foreign film productions in Greece, IOBE experts suggest a comprehensive national plan for film production.

They stressed that the first essential step Greece needs to make is to ease the current heavy bureaucracy in the issuance of licenses for filming in order to attract foreign producers and offer incentives for investments in the film industry to Greek entrepreneurs. (1 euro= 1.25 U.S. dollars)