Economic News
KPMG’s Competitive Alternatives 2012 study: Quebec City excels again!
Highlights
- On average, it is 5.8% cheaper to set up operations and do business in Quebec City than in US cities.
- Among comparably sized cities (500,000 to 2 million inhabitants), Quebec City ranks second worldwide and first among Canadian and US cities in terms of lowest operating costs.
- Taking all categories into account, Quebec ranks ninth worldwide out of 103 cities with mature markets. It ranks seventh among North American cities and sixth among Canadian cities.
- The sectors in which Quebec City excels most include digital entertainment, with a 23.4% cost advantage, financial services financiers (21.4%) and clinical trials (20.5%).
Commentary
KPMG's most recent Competitive Alternatives study, which is published every two years, provides further proof that Quebec City ranks among the top cities in the world when it comes to low business start-up and operating costs.
Compared with 27 similarly sized metropolitan regions around the world (between 0.5 and 2 million inhabitants), Quebec City ranks second, behind Marseille, France. For R&D firms (biotechnology, clinical trials, electronic systems development), the cost advantage is even more pronounced: 13.8% to 20.5% cheaper on average than in US cities. In the areas of digital entertainment and software development, the advantages are 23.4% and 12.4% respectively, while the financial services sector has an advantage of 21.4%. Quebec City also ranks favourably in the following sectors: telecommunications equipment (4,6%), pharmaceutical products (4.3%), medical devices (4.2%), electronic products (3.9%) and specialized chemical products (3.5%) and precision parts (2.9%).
Disregarding population size, Quebec still fares well, ranking ninth worldwide out of 103 cities in mature markets (US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Japan and Australia) and sixth in Canada, edging out Montreal (seventh) and Winnipeg (eighth).
Juan Pablo Camacho
Économist
Québec International
