Why have we decided to publish a scoreboard on France’s attractiveness as an investment location?
A great number of benchmarks examining the competitiveness of different economies, tax regimes, tertiary education systems and different business environments already exist, and each of them provides useful information. Yet many of them suffer from methodological limitations and, as such, the rankings they produce can vary significantly from one study to another.
Moreover, attractiveness is ultimately a relative concept as France is compared on a daily basis by foreign investors with its neighbors and rivals.
This is why the “France Attractiveness Scoreboard 2010” was published this week. This report is the fruit of collaboration between the IFA and several partners – the French Strategic Analysis Center (CAS), the French Treasury Directorate (DG Trésor), the French Interministerial Delegation for Regional Development and Economic Attractiveness (DATAR) – and has three aims:
- To take a detailed look at the data used to evaluate France’s role in the international investment arena, and at its ranking against a group of 12 countries on a range of principal attractiveness criteria;
- In contrast to league tables established by designing composite indicators, to separate statistical and economic analysis from qualitative appreciation gathered through opinion surveys which now feature in many benchmarks;
- To offer, in a more complex, changing post-crisis international environment, an authoritative document allowing international comparisons to be made on each of the criteria that are central to the choices that international investors confront when deciding where to locate their businesses, and to provide an annual update of France’s ranking against these criteria.
Last but not least, it will also be a precious aid to the IFA’s investment advisors working in the 23 Invest in France offices abroad, who are responsible for promoting France’s strengths as a business location to the 7,700 foreign companies that they meet up with every year.
David Appia,
Chairman and CEO of the IFA
- Read the full “France Attractiveness Scoreboard”
