Ireland ranked first for quality of FDI projects

Ireland has retained its position as the best country in the world for the quality of its foreign direct investment (FDI) in IBM’s annual Global Locations Trend report. It has also moved up four places in the World Bank’s ‘Doing Business’ rankings.

The country is ranked in first place in IBM’s report due to its success in attracting high quality research and development activities in life sciences and IT, coupled with high-value investment in financial services.

Ireland is also in the top four of global destination countries by estimated jobs - per million inhabitants, while Dublin makes the top 10 of destination cities for FDI in the world, based on projects won.

IBM said comparing countries on what projects are attracted, and not just the number of jobs, is an increasingly important metric for gauging inward investment performance. Its FDI value indicator assigns a value to each investment project, depending on the sector and the type of business activity. On this basis, which assesses the added value and knowledge intensity of jobs created by investment projects, Ireland is ranked as the top performer, followed by Malta, Denmark, Japan and Sweden.

Separately, the World Bank’s ‘Doing Business 2015’ report places Ireland in 13th place out of 189 countries for ease of doing business. This is four places higher than last year.

Ireland is also included in a ’top improvers’ list alongside nine other economies who have outperformed other nations since the previous year. Together the top 10 improvers, which also include Tajikistan, Benin, Togo, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Trinidad and Tobago, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates, implemented 40 regulatory reforms that have made it easier to do business.

According to the World Bank, the top ten countries for ease of doing business are Singapore, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Denmark, South Korea, Norway, USA, UK, Finland and Australia.

IDA Ireland welcomed the findings from both reports.

"Ireland has traditionally been a strong performer in FDI, but what comes through clearly from IBM's latest and influential report, is that the quality of projects won is very high. It is pleasing to see companies not just placing operational roles in Ireland, but also high value research and development (R&D) projects in Ireland. This is also happening across a number of sectors, which gives Ireland a welcome balance to its portfolio of overseas investments. The latest high ranking follows on from Forbes late last year describing Ireland as the best location in the world to do business," said IDA Ireland chief executive Martin Shanahan.

“In the World Bank report, we are reminded that the “nuts and bolts” of an economy sometimes get much less attention than the overall fiscal and monetary picture. The World Bank is recognising the efforts that Ireland is making to improve the ease of doing business here. Ireland’s improving score for ease of doing business will be positively received by potential international investors,” he added.