Second Globally For Foreign Direct Investment (fdi)

By Author: Mohd Ishtiak
Total Articles: 401
Comment this article

A survey in the first quarter of this year suggested that Ireland is the second most attractive country in the world for foreign direct investment.

At first glance, the findings would seem to be at odds with the broader economic backdrop in Ireland, but it’s timely to examine just how popular we remain and how many companies continue to look to us for FDI.

So why invest in Ireland? Well, after Singapore, the survey puts us in second place – so we must be doing a lot of things right.

The primary reasons given for our great record in foreign direct investment are a highly skilled workforce, our low corporation tax rate, and a steady improvement in our cost competitiveness.

The first two of these factors fail to surprise, but our increasing cost-competiveness is very definitely something that stands out.

For any company looking to invest in Europe – and Ireland in particular – the issue of cost competitiveness is particularly topical. There’s little doubt that we’ve had some ground to make up in this area, and it’s highly encouraging ...
... that we are doing so at a quite rapid rate.

So when companies ask themselves “Why invest in Ireland?” the traditional answers of low tax and skilled workforce are now being augmented by a third, powerful reason – a growing competitiveness when it comes to their cost base.

The other good news from the survey relates to the kind of jobs that are resulting from inward foreign direct investment (FDI Ireland). It’s not just any old jobs that are attracted to Ireland – we continue to gain very high quality investments, including numerous R&D projects which bode well for future investment in Ireland.

As to the type of companies that are deciding to invest in Ireland, we are seeing a very good supply of mid-sized projects, particularly drawn from services industries such as software or customer support.

Manufacturing is also well represented, of course, and the quality of such projects arriving here as part of our FDI efforts remains very high.