5th May 2016

Ekonom announces Czech towns most favorable for business in 2015

The Ekonom weekly recognized the town of Humpolec as the Czech town most favorable for business in 2015. The town is half-way between Prague and Brno, at the D1 highway connecting the two largest Czech cities. It has low unemployment rate, high share of entrepreneurs, businesses and large employers, and receved good rating for management of the town finance. The town has seen an increase in inhabitants number and has sufficient  number of technically educated students, population. A survey conducted by Microsoft, focusing on the use of modern technologies and open data, showed that modern technologies in Humpolec are a significant tool for communication of the town with its inhabitants, The town discloses online development plans, budget, digital maps, information related to transport and it is using cloud services. "We are trying to create the best working conditions for the businessmen…, says mayor of Humpolec Jiří Kučera. There is a lack of qualified labor, but we hope that the situation will improve in the future, also thanks to larger number of students with technical, vocational education in our surroundings", he adds. 

The town of Dobruška came second in the Ekonom survey, with favorable business environment, good approach of the municipal leadership to citizens, or favorable prices of building plots, for example. Other pluses mentioned by Ekonom were well-functioning electronic communication, long opening hours of the townhall, and low long-term unemployment rates. "Our greatest advantage are high quality employees. There are about 150 of them at the townhall..", mayor Petr Lžičař said.

Nová Paka, the winner of the competitiion in previous years, came third. "We want to be a place for living in the first place and the approach of the townhall to the city management is based on this principle. We are trying to be open and make the right decisions..," said mayor Josef Cogan. 

The towns with the best ratings in individual Czech regions:
Zlínský region (Kroměříž), Northern Moravia (Třinec), Olomoucký region (Litovel). More details are available here (in Czech). 

Some general outcomes of the survey:
Towns with high rating in the survey tend to have higher share of large employers, good access to highways, lower unemployment rates, including long-term unemployment rates, larger share of students, higher share of population with vocational, technical education, as well as good management at the townhalls, well-managed budget, lower debt service costs, lower prices of water, well-functioning communication between entrepreneurs and departments for services for small businesses, and lower local fees. The winners differ in no big extent from other towns in terms of the share of entrepreneurs, legal entities, prices of building plots and tapped EU funding.
Read more (in Czech).  

Members of the American Chamber of Commerce in the Czech Republic