Why does Inđija deserve to be the 18th location in category of 25 most recommendable FDI investment destinations ?

Every second year, a gala event is organized in hotel Majestic in Cannes during the MIPIM expo, and the year 2008 saw the third issue of that event, which is organized by specialized magazine “FDI“. On that occasion, the prestigious awards were granted and these awards provide guarantee and unequalled advantage for all laureates through realization of highly valued marketing all around the world. When a name enters the list of the awarded European cities and regions, that city or the region has full right to emphasize that success at any place and at any time prior to the next competition, which will be held, in this case, in 2010.

This time, a municipality from Serbia entered the list of the awarded for the second time in the history of this award. That municipality is Inđija, which took the 18th place in the category of the 25 most recommendable FDI investment destinations.

When MIPIM is on in Cannes, everything is kind of glamourous. Since the people and companies who come to MIPIM know that they have to prepare something seriously and offer something serious and professional at MIPIM and for MIPIM, which represents a leading platform for support to the real estate development, then the establishment of FDI platform and accompanying award in Cannes, while MIPIM is underway, is the bull’s-eye shot. Eight members of the jury sent an application – questionnaire in summer 2007 to 1,000 addresses of the cities and regions all around Europe. The main questions in this application are the questions concerning quality of positive investment terms and plans for economic development.

Let us remind that Belgrade won the title of the city of future of southeast Europe at the second issue of this event, two years ago. That award recommended Belgrade as the best place for investments. It can be said that, because of the quality and prestige of this award, Belgrade still has many benefits. It also made it easier for Inđija to appear on the list of the recommended investment destinations of Europe for the year 2008.

Questions and Answers

The representatives of the cities and regions were to provide sufficient information in five main fields included in the questionnaire. First of all, they were asked to describe their economic potential, including the amount of GNP, as well as to describe the activities based on the government’s economic initiatives and to define their priorities. Also, they were to provide information on local investments, including the size and the number of these investments realized in the past 2 years. They also needed to point to the most significant investments in 2007 that led to creation of new jobs. Among the rest, the applicants were asked to present the attractive details of their promotional strategies. At the same time, they were supposed to present ongoing and implemented infrastructure projects and the quality of urban planning, as well as the budget for aforementioned projects.

By the way, all questions can be classified into seven main categories. The first is the category of economic potential and, in this case, the information for certain city or region is provided by the institutions like IMF and Eurostat (for example: What is the annual inflation in the countries whose cities and regions are competing?) or only by IMF (What is the amount of GNP in the countries whose cities and regions are competing?). Then there is the category of business friendliness, which includes the questions like: How big are the taxes on workers’ salaries? (Eurostat provides the information), How much easier or simpler is the development of business? (the World Bank provides the information), How big is the tax on corporate profit? (OECD provides the information), What is the global competitiveness of the “contestant“? (IMF provides the information), etc.

There are also questions concerning the quality of life. First of all, the air pollution data, general level of the quality of health and sanitarian care are the subjects of comparison. The level of development of traffic, which represents the basic pollutant in some underdeveloped areas, is also an important data. As far as the category of HR quality is concerned, the questions concern the level of quality of qualification of workers, which is estimated by Cushman & Wakefield, the productivity of the workers per hour, the percentage of adults between 24 and 64 who graduated from secondary vocational school, etc. The percentage of people who obtained university education in the population aged between 20 and 29 in the cities and the regions that are “competing“ represents another important criterion.

In the category of questions about prices and costs, the information that is required concerns the prices of office space, minimum amount of wages, prices of phone calls to the USA, prices of the units of electric energy and gas, as well as average price of 122 selected products, that is, the goods from the list of UBS’ study. The category with the questions about the quality of infrastructure is also very important. It includes the questions about the quality of telecommunication and transportation services, as well as about size of investments in telecommunication and transportation of investments.

The last and maybe the most important category of questions concerns the amount of FDI investments. What is asked from the “competitors“ is to present total FDI, promotional strategy and initiative, project development, development of plans, the most significant investments in 2007 and the most significant investments in 2006.

Among the best

Once all the applications are collected and the mighty software does the calculation and rank the “competitors“, it turns out that London is the first on that list in most of the cases. In the category of the city of Europe and the most important city of Europe, that is the most attractive FDI destination, the city with the most valuable human resources and the city in the greatest mood for business development. Also, London is the first on the list of 10 cities with the best infrastructure and the highest quality of life.

As far as aforementioned municipality of Inđija is concerned, its 18th place represents a nice success. That success is even greater if we have in mind that this Srem-based municipality with 22,000 citizens was ranked as more attractive than Budapest, Frankfurt, Madrid, Warsaw and Amsterdam.

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