Emerging Europe’s team of business experts evaluating business opportunities in cities and regions worldwide has published its Business-Friendly City Perception Index 2021 rankings. Kaunas is mentioned more than once in the top 10 of the rankings in terms of its quality of life and available economic potential.
“Kaunas offers a favourable and business-friendly environment that is expanding rapidly. I am glad that these values of our city have also been noticed far beyond Lithuania. Making it to the top positions in these prestigious rankings is an excellent recognition and the result of the efforts that we have been consistently devoting to strengthening the growth of Kaunas for more than five years,” said Visvaldas Matijošaitis, the Mayor of Kaunas city.
There is every reason to be proud: business leaders from various European countries choosing the most business-friendly cities in Central and Eastern Europe awarded Kaunas for its quality of life and ranked the city seventh in this category. The city’s economic potential did not go unnoticed as well – Kaunas ranked eighth in this category. In the overall ranking of the friendliness of business environment, Kaunas ranked twenty-third.
In the Quality of Life category of the ranking published by Emerging Europe, which constantly monitors and evaluates positive developments in Central and Eastern Europe, Kaunas ranked higher than Sofia (Bulgaria) and Lviv (Ukraine) (in eighth and ninth places, respectively). Warsaw (Poland) ranked last among the top ten cities with the most favourable conditions for comfortable living.
As to the economic potential of the cities, Kaunas ranked higher than the startup-friendly Tallinn (Estonia), which is in the ninth position of the ranking, as well as Gdansk (Poland), which is in the last place in the top ten.
In the overall ranking of the friendliness of business environment, Zagreb (Croatia) and Katowice (Poland) ranked lower than Kaunas and are twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth, respectively.
Tadas Stankevičius, Director of Kaunas-based tourism, investment and international marketing development agency Kaunas IN, is pleased with the well-deserved recognition and concludes that it is the result of close cooperation within the business community: “Here in Kaunas, we are constantly looking for new solutions and strive to make businesses feel safe. We also encourage businesses to boldly develop innovative ideas, pursue development and open up new horizons. The international recognition achieved by Kaunas was made possible only by the close cooperation of the members of the business community in the city and throughout Lithuania,” said Mr. Stankevičius.
The Polish city of Lodz topped the list of cities with the most attractive business environment this year, followed by Prague (Czech Republic) and Ljubljana (Slovenia).
When making the rankings, investment environment experts, business advisers and analysts from across Europe selected cities anonymously and assessed their potential. There are more than 100 cities in the emerging Europe (Central and Eastern Europe), as referred to by the authors of the rankings.
It is not the first time that Kaunas receives international recognition in terms of a favourable business environment: in the beginning of 2020, the city received an award for the strategy of attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) in the fDi Intelligence rating category Small European Regions of the Future 2020/21. And just a few months later, the start-up ecosystem of Kaunas competed with as many as one thousand cities around the world and took an honourable 112th position in the Startup Blink rankings.
Learn more about the awards here.