February 26 (SeeNews) - Bulgarian capital Sofia ranks third among 10 most promising major European cities in terms of foreign direct investment (FDI) strategy, after London and Dublin, fDi Intelligence, a publication from the Financial Times, reported.
Serbia's Nis and Sabac were also placed in the FDI strategy category - Nis landed sixth among 10 small European cities and Sabac took the 10th place among micro European cities, according to fDi European Cities and Regions of the Future 2020/2021 report published last week.
Data used for the rankings was collected for 505 locations under five categories - economic potential, human capital and lifestyle, cost-effectiveness, connectivity and business friendliness. The additional sixth category, FDI strategy, included data from 161 submissions.
Sofia also ranks third among 10 major European cities in the cost-effectiveness category, followed by Romania's capital Bucharest. Bucharest took the fourth spot in the business friendliness category, the report showed.
Three cities of Southeast Europe (SEE) - Moldova's Chisinau, Serbia's Novi Sad, Romania's Iasi and Albania's capital Tirana, were included in a separate ranking in the report which gathers the top 10 mid-sized European cities in terms of cost-effectiveness. Chisinau, Novi Sad and Iasi were placed in the top three positions, respectively, while Tirana took the fifth spot.
As regards small European cities included in the cost-effectiveness category, the ranking was entirely constituted of SEE cities. Bulgaria's Ruse, Serbia's Leskovac and Bulgaria's Burgas topped the list.
In another ranking - Eastern European regions of the future, Romania's Bucharest-Ilfov and Bulgaria's Sofia City region were placed fourth and sixth, respectively.
Bucharest was the only SEE city to be included in the overall fDi European Cities and Regions of the Future 2020/2021 ranking, taking the 22th place among 25 locations on the list of cities. No SEE regions were placed in the overall ranking for European regions.
According to the report, London is the most attractive city for FDI, "despite Brexit uncertainty".