Date: 22 Jun 2009
The World Bank has ranked the Scottish Development International (SDI) sixth in the world amongst national and subnational investment bodies for its work in attracting overseas investment to Scotland. It outranks all other UK agencies.
The Washington-based bank's global investment promotion benchmarking report for 2009 compared international agencies to assess their performance in attracting inward investors. Produced jointly with two World Bank Group affiliates - the International Finance Corporation and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency - the report looked at the work of 181 countries in influencing foreign investors looking for new global locations.
Scotland's inward investment and trade promotion agency came sixth after Austria, Copenhagen, Sweden, Germany and Canada. Each agency's website and two "mystery shopper" projects were assessed. Ranked immediately below Scotland were, in descending order, Manchester, the UK, Ireland, France and London.
On top of its global ranking, SDI was commended for its work in the areas of customer care and follow-up. As well as working to attract inward investment and knowledge to Scotland to help grow the economy, SDI helps Scottish companies do more business overseas and promote Scotland as a good place to live, work and do business.
Ceci Sager, who manages the World Bank's Investment Climate Advisory Services Department, said: "We would like to congratulate Scottish Development International on achieving such a high level of performance despite the challenging economic climate. SDI excelled over many of its peers, scoring particularly highly in the area of customer care and follow up.
"One of the leading investment promotion agencies in both the UK and globally, SDI has proven to be very effective in facilitating foreign investment projects, further building on Scotland's reputation as a successful global investment location."
Last week SDI announced that over the period 2008-09 it brought £500 million of planned investment to Scotland, including almost 2,000 high-value jobs. Lena Wilson, chief executive of SDI said:
"Scotland has a strong track record of attracting foreign direct investment. Our World Bank ranking further builds on the real success we have had over the past year in bringing projects to Scotland."
According to SDI, inward investment to Scotland saw the creation of 4000 jobs over the period 2008-09, almost 2000 of which were "high value" jobs with annual salaries of over £30,000. Looking ahead, Wilson said: "We are pursuing opportunities in renewables and financial services and I have a lot of foreign travel booked between now and the end of the year.
"The pipeline of projects is certainly tough and challenging but I am still setting the same targets as last year, as we still need to aim high. I am confident that if we can stick to the focus we can get there, and we certainly want to continue to be known for great sales, great customer service. There is no big leap between us and the next in the rankings but we'll certainly aim to be in the first division next year."
Organisations that have either located or expanded their operations in Scotland in the past year include Esure, Schering Plough, Shed Media and Doosan Babcock.