Indiana Among 'Top States For Doing Business'
A national site selection publication ranks Indiana among the top 5 states in the nation for doing business. Area Development magazine says the rankings are based on a group of location consultants, who are asked to make choices in one dozen categories.WESTBURY, N.Y. Area Development, the leading publication covering site selection and facility planning, has announced the results of its 2011 Top States For Doing Business survey of leading location consultants. According to the results, the top-10 states for doing business are Texas, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Indiana, Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, and California in that order.
Area Development asked a select group of highly respected location consultants who work with a nationwide client base to name their top-5 state choices in 12 site selection categories, as follows:
Business environment
1. Overall cost of doing business
2. Incentives programs
3. Business friendliness
4. Corporate tax environment
Labor climate
1. Labor availability
2. Labor costs
3. Work force development programs
Infrastructure/global access
1. Rail & highway accessibility
2. Certified sites & shovel-ready programs
3. Competitive utility rates
4. Access to global markets
Economy
1. Leading in the economic recovery
States were ranked in each of the 12 categories above based on the number of times they were named as a “top-5” choice by the responding consultants. Next, a top-5 state’s ranking in each of the 12 categories was assigned a weight in accordance with its position in these individual categories. Based on these total weighted scores, Texas significantly led all other states as the consultants’ #1 choice for doing business, followed by the states listed above.
The top-5 states based on weighted scores were each mentioned in at least 8 of 12 categories. Three other states — Louisiana, Mississippi, and North Carolina — were mentioned among the top-5 states in 6 of 12 categories, and Tennessee was mentioned in 4 of 12. Several other states made the top-5 listings in the 12 individual categories but were mentioned in fewer categories overall. Nonetheless, these states also are considered among 2011’s top states for doing business according to the consultants responding to our survey.
A full review of this year’s Top States for Doing Business is presented in the Fall 2011 issue of Area Development and is posted online at http://www.areadevelopment.com/top-states.
Area Development (www.areadevelopment.com), published since 1965, is bi-monthly and has 42,000 executive subscribers. It also has produced more than 25 Best Practices Consultants Forums for economic developers since 2006.
Source: Area Development