Belfast Leads The Way In Attracting Foreign Investment

It has been revealed that outside of London, Belfast is now the top ranking destination city in the UK for attracting foreign investment projects, according to a new survey.

OCO, a Northern Ireland headquartered company, with offices across the world, has launched a new inward investment tracker today, coinciding with the latest foreign direct investment (FDI) indicators for the one year period ending June 2007.

The company, which specialises in products and services relating to FDI, has tracked global investment trends and projects since 2003 and launched its latest version of its online investment intelligence database – OCO MonitorTM today.

OCO MonitorTM has already been adopted as the source of FDI project data for The Economist Intelligence Unit and the UNCTAD World Investment Report.

Mark O'Connell, CEO of OCO, said: “The launch of Monitor sees global investment intelligence taken to a new level and should help both Economic Development Organisations and Multinational Corporations to get a clear and up to date picture of the FDI environment.

"This intelligence can be used to inform investment promotion strategy and help regions focus on their competitive advantage. For Multinationals, they can understand the investment hot spots and Belfast is among the best. FDI will continue to make an important contribution to the Northern Ireland economy given that last year alone 6,878 new jobs were created from 35 investment projects.”

Belfast’s strong performance has also been matched regionally with Northern Ireland’s top ranking for financial services software investment projects in the UK.

Invest NI has been using the tool for the past four years, helping it to make informed decisions about emerging sectors and markets for inward investment.

Dr. Henry Loewendahl, who is Global Director for OCO’s Investment Products said: “Competition certainly is intensifying for foreign direct investment. Northern Ireland has been successful in adopting a clear sector strategy and is clearly outperforming many of the other parts of the UK in certain sectors."

(LC/SP)