An international team of business experts ‘Emerging Europe’, assessing the business opportunities of cities and regions, has published a ranking ‘Business-Friendly City Perception Index 2021’. The name of Kaunas has been mentioned in several top ten lists of this ranking, where the city has been praised for its quality of life and economic potential.

“Kaunas is a favourable and business-friendly environment that is expanding rapidly. I am glad that these values of our city are noticed outside of Lithuania. Reaching the highest positions in the prestigious ranking is an excellent assessment and a result of the efforts that we have been consistently devoting to strengthening the growth of Kaunas city for more than five years.“ – Kaunas City Mayor Visvaldas Matijošaitis rejoiced.

There is definitely a reason to rejoice: business leaders from various European countries, selecting the most business-friendly cities in Central and Eastern Europe, gave an award to Kaunas for quality of life and the city was given a seventh place. The economic potential of the city did not go unnoticed too – eighth place was received in this category. In the general assessment of the friendliness of the business environment, Kaunas achieved twenty-third place.

In the ranking by ‘Emerging Europe’ in the category evaluating quality of life Kaunas surpassed Sofia (Bulgaria) and Lviv (Ukraine), which were ranked eighth and ninth, respectively. Warsaw (Poland) has completed the top ten of cities with the most favourable conditions for comfortable living.

In terms of the economic potential of the cities, Kaunas even surpassed the start-up Tallinn (Estonia), which was in the ninth ranking position, as well as Gdansk (Poland), which was in the last place in the top ten.

Zagreb (Croatia) and Katowice (Poland) stayed behind Kaunas in the overall attractiveness of the city’s business environment and ranked twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth, respectively.

The director of ‘Kaunas IN’ public Institution which creates favourable conditions for business, tourism and international marketing development in Kaunas, Tadas Stankevičius explains, “Here in Kaunas, we are constantly looking for new solutions and strive to make businesses feel safe and confident. We also encourage them to develop innovative ideas, pursue development and always be keen to expand their horizons. The international evaluation Kaunas received was only possible due to the close cooperation of the members of the business community in the city and throughout Lithuania.”

The Polish city of Łódź topped the list of cities with the most attractive business environment this year, followed by Prague (Czech Republic) and Ljubljana (Slovenia).

In the making of the ranking, investment environment experts, business advisors and analysts from across Europe selected cities anonymously and assessed their potential. In ‘The rising Europe’, as the creators of the rating call Central and Eastern Europe, there are more than 100 cities.

It is not the first time that Kaunas is successful when it comes to a positive award and recognition for the city’s business environment internationally. In the beginning of 2020, the city received an evaluation for the strategy of attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the ‘fDi Intelligence’ rating category ‘Small Regions of the Future of Europe 2020/21’. And just a few months later, the Kaunas start-up ecosystem competed with as many as a thousand cities around the world and took an honourable 112th position in the ‘Startup Blink’ rankings.

 

 

Public Institution‘s ‘Kaunas IN‘ Information