Katowice was ranked second for the FDI Strategy category in the fDi’s Polish Cities of the Future 2015/16 report prepared by fDi Magazine. Also, the City was seventh in the overall ranking.
According to the fDi Magazine, the Katowice City Hall has nine dedicated employees working in its strategic investors assistance department, in addition to staff working to attract investment at Katowice Special Economic Zone, which received an honourable mention in fDi’s Global Free Zones of the Year 2014.
„Judges were impressed with Katowice’s international outreach and strategy for approaching investors. Important to their strategy is their presence at various conferences and exhibitions around the world, including property exhibition Mipim in Cannes and the World BPO/IT Forum in New York. Supplementing the City’s international physical presence, the judging panel also commented on the City’s reach in international and domestic media – including Forbes, Poland Today and fDi Magazine” – can be read in the report. Łódź has ranked in first place in this category.
“I believe the distinction was awarded to Katowice for our pro-investment strategy” – Marcin Krupa, Katowice mayor, was quoted in the report.
Additionally, Katowice was ranked seventh in the overall ranking of the report. It is worth to mention, that the other city of the Katowice agglomeration – Gliwice, was classified at the 10th position. To prepare the report, a list of 50 locations was drawn up to include the top 50 locations in Poland in terms of inward FDI projects. Data was collected for Katowice and all the other locations in the following categories: economic potential (Katowice was 9th), human capital and lifestyle (the City was outside the top ten), cost effectiveness (outside the top five), connectivity (7th) and business friendliness (6th). Locations scored up to 10 points for each data point, which was then weighted by importance to the FDI decision-making process to compile both the subcategory rankings, as well as the overall ranking. FDI strategy was the only qualitative category and the results were not added to the overall score.
The other Katowice agglomeration’s cities got high scores in the connectivity category from amongst the 50 locations – Chorzów, Mysłowice and Sosnowiec ranked in second, third and fourth place, respectively.
In the overall category, Warsaw has been named fDi’s Polish city of the future 2015/16.