Emerging Markets 2013: Top cities for doing business

Businesses are allotting their resources to finding new hubs where they can establish satellite offices and factories. Some cities in the world are much friendlier to business enterprises than others. The cities that are recognized by investors as emerging markets are ideal business locales, and all have a stable infrastructure, a dependable and productive labor force, and a prosperous local populace.

Emerging Markets

What do South America, Asia, and the Middle East have in common?

Many cities in South America, Asia, and the Middle East have experienced rapid growth in the past ten years. Aside from the characteristics mentioned above that make these hubs ideal for multinational companies the regulations in some of these locations are also much less stringent. Companies choose to move their headquarters to cities in these locations and even hire more at these sites than in their primary locations in Europe or North America. The BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) are still key players and will remain so for many industries until 2017 despite recurrent problems in employment and poverty that discouraged some entrepreneurs in 2012.

Showing great potential

 

Makati Skyline (The Philippines)

There are new names that have come up in talks with regard to emerging markets. Investors are now looking at countries that they would not have seriously considered a decade ago. Some multinational companies are shifting their attention from the BRICs to the Philippines and Thailand (Asia), Mexico (Central America), Peru (South America), and Nigeria (Western Africa). In 2013, investors are willing to risk more, relying on unprecedented economic growth and various other encouraging signs in these countries.

Asian footholds
For a few years now, there has been an ongoing shift from traditional business centers such as New York and London to booming real estate and business centers such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the Middle East. In Asia, Jakarta, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Shanghai had their share in the real estate limelight.

 

Singapore

The island state of Singapore remains one of Asia’s multinational favorites. Singapore provides the required office space and this year, there is no reason for the city to fail at its ability to continue providing the supply that the rest of the world demands. The most number of corporate headquarters are still in Tokyo, but since the cost of living is too high, Singapore fares better in the reckoning of many.

CNN’s video feature, “The Emerging Markets of the Future” confirmed that China is still “on schedule to surpass the US as the world’s biggest economy by 2030.” In 2012, a Bloomberg report put the city of Hong Kong, the gateway to China, as “the best place to do business.” Businesses thrive in Hong Kong because taxes are low and policies that encourage free trade thrive. When Hong Kong was returned to China, many became worried that the territory would become stagnant. Now, it is the first choice for multinational companies when they choose the seat of their Asian strongholds.

New business hubs have emerged in the past decade, and these prime locations are proving to be ideal not just because they are economically stable, but also because they provide companies with buying customers. Both are important requirements for any business to thrive.