'SA is a top emerging country'

Johannesburg - The city of Johannesburg has been ranked 11 of 65 cities in the MasterCard Worldwide Emerging Markets Index. An expert says this puts SA up next to top emerging economies like Brazil, Russia, India and China, the so-called Brics.

The index identifies and ranks the 65 most important cities in emerging market countries, assessing them on eight criteria spanning the economic, business and commercial environment and development, education and IT connectivity.

"Some countries really dominate their regions," said T-Sec economist Mike Schüssler, while talking to media at the release of the index on Wednesday.

He said that the sub-theme running through the overall index was Shanghai and Beijing coming through as the top two cities, with a host of other Chinese cities up near the top.

"It's amazing that China had 15 of the top 30 cities in the emerging market universe. It is really an amazing achievement and you can see Johannesburg in 11th place, with Cape Town and Durban also featuring in the top 40," he said.

According to Schüssler, this is the second time that South Africa has seen Johannesburg ranked and the first time for Cape Town and Durban.

The index showed that the city of Cape Town was ranked 33rd - just two places ahead of Bogota in Colombia - while the city of Durban was ranked 37th after Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

Interdependence

"I think it's something we can use to sell the country with. It can help SA look at its strengths and weaknesses versus the other cities in the same arena we play in," said Schüssler

"I also think a very important lesson for us is that the cities are also interdependent with the countries in this index," he said.

"As we know from the imbizo that we had with [ex-president Thabo] Mbeki in Johannesburg, we know that the city needs to obtain a 9% growth rate for SA to get to a 6% growth rate, and I think the interdependence between the country and the city as such is important."

SA was ranked best in one of the eight dimensions, the business environment, which "is the most important" according to Schüssler. The business environment had a 16.6% weighting against the other dimensions.

The survey showed only a few countries with more than two cities ranked in the top 65. "There's quite a few from China, Brazil and Russia and then we have got three in Pakistan and SA has got three," said Schüssler.

He said that India had eight cities in the index, with that country dominating the South Asia region. Brazil dominated Latin America, South Africa dominated Africa and emerging Europe was dominated by Russia.

- Fin24.com