BY NIHAT DELIBASI
Izmir is now one of the top 10 European cities for Business Friendliness and Cost Effectiveness per the ‘European Cities and Regions of the Future 2022/2023’ report prepared biyearly by fDi Intelligence, the foreign direct investment (FDI) publication arm of the UK-based daily business newspaper, The Financial Times.
553 different locations were evaluated in Europe for the survey and ranked under several categories, such as economic potential, human capital and lifestyle, cost-effectiveness, connectivity, and business friendliness. Izmir ranked 10th among the top 10 large European cities in terms of business friendliness and 8th among the top 10 large European cities in terms of cost-effectiveness.
The survey, which also examined cities in terms of their FDI strategy, assessed the data from 114 different locations in Europe using a jury. Izmir ranked 5th among the top 10 large European cities in terms of FDI. The jury evaluated the work of the Izmir Development Agency (IZKA) and its FDI strategy, which concentrates on clean energy, clean technology, software-information technologies (IT).
IZKA strives to attract domestic and foreign investment to Izmir in clean energy, clean technology, software-information technologies (IT) using investment promotion, according to Dr. Mehmet Yavuz, Secretary-General of IZKA. “Izmir is groundbreaking, especially in terms of investments in the wind industry and clean energy sector. We estimate this trend will continue with the solar energy industry given recent talks we have held with investors,” said Yavuz.
