FDi, a foreign and domestic investment profile from the Financial Times, one of the world's leading economic journals, which provides relevant market information to some 45,000 investors and advisers worldwide, is launching a "European Cities and Regions of the Future" competition every two years, aiming to identify and focus on the most attractive cities and regions for development policy.
Miskolc also applied for the announced tender and achieved excellent results: it became the 5th most attractive European investor target among small towns in terms of foreign direct investment, relevant for 2020-21.
To prepare the survey, the Financial Times collected data from 319 European cities.
Five categories looked at what makes each city attractive to a foreign investor. To compile the list, they examined the economic potential, human capacity and living conditions, cost-effectiveness, networking opportunities, and the extent to which businesses in the city are supported. And the sixth category is a combination of these, which looks at the strategy followed by foreign investors..
The ranking was based on serious professional criteria:
- To determine the economic potential, data were collected on, among other things, the population, the growth rate, the unemployment rate, inflation, and gross domestic product.
- In terms of human capacity and living conditions, the number of employees in relation to the total population, the number of participants in secondary education, the number of participants in university education, the number of educational institutions, life expectancy, the number of general practitioners per 100,000 people were decisive.
- In case of cost-effectiveness, the annual salary, the minimum wage, the rents, the number of four- to five-star hotels, the costs of starting a business, petrol prices, and the corporate tax rate were aspects.
- In the category of connectivity, for example, the speed of uploading and downloading the Internet, how many airports are nearby and how close they are, whether there is a port, and the quality of roads and rail services.
- Finally, they also looked at what support an investor can expect, i.e. what kind of banks there are in the given settlement, how many days it is possible to start a business, whether there is corruption
European cities were divided into five groups. Cities with more than 750,000 inhabitants are among the largest cities, cities with more than 500,000 inhabitants are large cities, medium-sized cities have more than 200,000 inhabitants, small towns have more than 100,000 inhabitants and micro-cities have less than 100,000 inhabitants.
For Miskolc, this is the fourth such recognition:
- For the first time in 2008, the magazine declared the economic area of Miskolc particularly attractive. In the competition announced every two years among European cities, the professional jury ranked Miskolc 16th out of the 25 most recommended investment locations based on the evaluation criteria.
- In 2010, Miskolc submitted its application for the second time to the biennial competition, as a result of which the city won fourth place in two categories: on the one hand among the cities of Central and Eastern Europe, and on the other hand the "micro" with less than 250,000 inhabitants. all cities, so that no other Hungarian city had received such recognition at that time.
With the awards, the professional jury recognized the economic potential of Miskolc, the main elements of which are:
- favorable logistic possibilities,
- largest industrial park portfolio of the region with well-developed infrastructure,
- availability of adequate quantity and quality of workforce,
- higher education and research institutions as a scientific background,
- modern education- and healthcare system
- supportive, investor-friendly local government, availability of “one-stop shop” administration syste,.