Ostrava is the best Czech city for business

20/4 2018

This spring has brought several prestigious awards to Ostrava, recognizing the city’s increasingly strong profile as an investment destination. The most recent was Ostrava’s ranking in a survey to find the most business-friendly town or city in the Czech Republic; Ostrava finished in first place in the overall rankings. 

Ostrava is the best Czech city for business

Deputy Mayor Radim Babinec receiving the award

Ostrava was ranked top for the business-friendly approach of local authorities in the Moravian-Silesian Region. The survey – conducted by the Datank agency – compared than 205 Czech towns and cities (plus the individual municipal districts of Prague) to create a unique league table of the municipalities with the strongest business potential in the country. Ostrava finished in first place in the overall rankings. The award was presented to Ostrava’s Deputy Mayor Radim Babinec at the ‘City for Business 2017’ awards ceremony, held on Wednesday 18 April at Prague’s DOX contemporary arts centre.

The competition jury singled out several strengths which helped Ostrava to achieve its outstanding result. These included the City of Ostrava’s website (which includes a wealth of practical information for businesses), the business-friendly opening hours of various local government offices, and above all the city’s excellent performance in a test of e-communication, for which the organizers (posing as a genuine business) sent a range of business-related inquiries to the local authority and received rapid, accurate and helpful responses. Ostrava was also ranked highly due to the large number of SMEs in the city, which benefit greatly from the city’s easy access to the international motorway network. Ostrava’s universities likewise contributed to its excellent ranking: the city has a high number of students studying in technical fields, representing a strong source of potential for future development. See HERE for the complete results.

Deputy Mayor Radim Babinec commented on the city’s awards: “This spring has been very successful for us. First we won an international award for our success in becoming a hub for shared services centres. This was followed by an award for our foreign investment strategy, and now we have won two national awards in the ‘City for Business’ survey. These awards send out a clear signal that we are moving in the right direction, and in the future we will of course continue to actively prioritize these areas – supporting investment and innovation, expanding our business infrastructure, and focusing on creating an attractive labour market with strong added value. All these areas form a key part of the City of Ostrava’s Strategic Plan for the period 2017–2023.”

2018 awards for Ostrava:

5th place in the category ‘Emerging City of the Year – CEE’ in the CEE Shared Services and Outsourcing Awards 2018, organized by BiznesPolska (a Polish website targeted at foreign investors).

6th place in the category ‘TOP10 fDi Strategy’ in the awards for fDi European Cities and Regions of the Future 2018/2019. The award ceremony took place at the MIPIM 2018 investment event in Cannes. The competition is run by the prestigious fDi Magazine (published by fDi Intelligence, a division of the UK-based Financial Times Group).

1st place within the Moravian-Silesian Region as part of the ‘City for Business’ rankings.

1st place in the national ‘City for Business’ rankings.