fDi Magazine released the “European Cities and Regions of the Future 2014/15” report and announced winners in several categories. Katowice was ranked second place in the FDI strategy from amongst all large European cities. The magazine also crowned Katowice as the top Eastern European city within this category.
Katowice was also the highest ranking Eastern European city of the future for FDI promotion strategy in 2012 when the “European Cities and Regions of the Future 2012/13” report was published.
Data was collected for 468 locations, both cities and regions, in five categories: economic potential, human capital and lifestyle, cost effectiveness, infrastructure and business friendliness. Additionally, surveys were collected under a sixth category, FDI strategy, for which there were 180 submissions. In this category, locations submitted details about their strategy for promoting FDI, which was then scored by fDi’s judging panel.
In the FDI strategy, Katowice faced competition from UK’s Glasgow, which scored the best result and was ranked first. Katowice also scored well in the overall category, ranking ninth of all large European cities (Munich took first position, while Wrocław was eighth) and third of all Eastern European cities – followed by such locations as Moscow (5), Bratislava (9) and Prague (10).
In the same ranking, the Silesia Metropolis was placed first in the cost effectiveness category among all large European regions, sixth for FDI promotion strategy and sixth as well in overall category among Eastern European regions.
The fDi analysts’ recorded 3652 greenfield FDI projects (excluding retail) in Europe from January to November 2013. In the same period, Europe received just over a third of global FDI, the largest of any world region. Of Europe’s FDI projects, 665 investments (18.2%) were made in the software and IT sector, compared with 14.4% in Asia. Software publishing was Europe’s largest subsector, accounting for more than half of all investment in software and IT.