Financial Times Ranks Medjimurje Among Top 10 Regions for Attracting Foreign Investment
Excellent recognition for one Croatian region when it comes to attracting foreign investments.
“We’re the only county to have had a higher GDP in 2014 than in 2008, and in this period, we recorded the highest salary growth in Croatia,” Medjimurje County’s prefect stated.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 1st of March, 2018, the Croatian region of Medjimurje has featured in no less than the specialised edition of the Financial Times’ “fDi Magzine”, which monitors and compares world-class investment trends.
Medjimurje, which is all but overlooked when it comes to Croatian tourism, was ranked among the top ten in regions with less than one and a half million people, in the quality of the strategy for attracting foreign investment. Otherwise, Croatia’s northernmost region of Medjimurje comes in seventh in the competition of 146 locations with less than 1.5 million inhabitants.
At a press conference, Medjimurje County Prefect Matija Posavec stated that such levels of recognition aren’t merely accidental, but are the fruit of long, arduous and systematic work on attracting investments, promoting Medjimurje’s regional economy and strengthening the area’s overall entrepreneurial environment.
A naturally proud Posavec has released figures which, at least in his opinion, show why fDi Magazine has ranked the quiet, unassuming Medjimurje region in the top ten.
Aside from recalling the fact that this particular county had a higher GDP in the year 2014 than it did all the way back in 2008, Posavec also talked about the county’s rise in employment, noting that over 2,500 jobs have been opened in the past four years alone.
Responding to a question about the advantages that Medjimurje may or may not have in relation to other regions, he responded by saying that those advantages are geographic, a high level of communal infrastructure, efficient public administration and, above all, extremely hard working inhabitants.
“The best recommendation is the investors who’ve been here with us for a long time, not only did they not leave, but they expanded their investments by opening up new plants and increasing employment,” Posavec said.
Director of the REDEA Regional Development Agency Sandra Polanec Marinović also confirmed Posavec’s earlier comment that Medjimurje’s praiseworthy success is far from a coincidence.
“A strategy for attracting foreign direct investment, simplified bureaucracy, and implementing post-investment care has been developed, that is, we monitor the investor even after they’ve invested,” she said.
For this year’s choice, fDi Magazine gathered data on 489 different locations (301 cities, 150 regions, 38 local partnerships) and placed them into five categories: economic potential, work environment, cost efficiency, infrastructure and positive business environment.