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bne September 2017 Companies & Markets I 15
Brno top destination for tech startups in CEE/CIS
Russia has the most barriers
to trade for European exporters
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lowed by Helsinki, San Francisco, Berlin and Stockholm.
Like other countries from the CEE/CIS region, Brno’s score is pushed up by low costs – both the cost of living and the cost of employing tech and management staff are relatively low – but it also scores well on factors such as safety, income tax and vacation days.
The ranking by the furnished apartment platform is based on scores on a scale of one to five in five categories: startup ecosystem, salary, social security and benefits, cost of living, and quality of life.
“We began by researching hundreds of locations across the world and selected 85 of the world’s most dynamic startup cit- ies. These ranged from quintessential startup hubs such as San Francisco, to cities leading the way in the digitalisation of their continents, such as Lagos, Nigeria,” said the report’s authors.
Brno was in 31st place on the index of 85 cities, with Prague close behind in 35th place, followed by Warsaw in 39th place.
he Czech Republic’s second city Brno is the highest ranked city in the CEE/CIS region on Nestpick’s latest Startup
Cities Index. Globally, Singapore tops the ranking, fol-
Other CEE cities such as Bucharest (52nd), Budapest (55th) and Bratislava (56th) also score relatively well, beating the likes of Moscow (68th), Tallinn (69th), Istanbul (72nd), Riga (73rd) and Sofia (74th).
The scores of all of the CEE cities are lifted by their affordabil- ity, for which their rankings range from 8th (Bucharest)
to 35th (Moscow).
The cost of employing tech personnel is also relatively low
in the region, with Brno the more affordable city. It is ranked in 7th place for entry-level personnel, which have an aver- age salary of just €17,461, and 9th for experienced personnel (€27,619). This is despite recent data showing rising salaries in several key CEE markets.
A previous study from real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield also identified Brno as the top destination for IT firms among eight regional cities, citing the low level of wages and other costs such as office rents.
On the other hand, cities from the region scored less well in areas such as healthcare and gender equality.
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he EC report, which is based on information from Euro- pean firms, identifies 372 barriers to trade currently in
use, with the largest stock of barriers (33) imposed by
ments for psychological and educational safety of toys that would be unique in international practice.
Russia is in a sanctions war with the West, which first imposed restrictions following Russia’s annexation of the Crimea in Ukraine in 2014. The Kremlin responded with a ban on the imports of European agricultural produce. Since then the US recently imposed fresh sanctions on Rus- sia as punishment for interfering in the US elections last year. And Europe also expanded its sanctions regime in August after a Russian subsidiary belonging to Germany’s Siemens was caught shipping power turbines to Crimea.
Russia. Brazil, China and India each had stocks of 23 barriers against European firms, reports Bank of Finland Institute for Economies in Transition (BOFIT).
Russia accounted for six of the 36 new barriers introduced in 2016. These measures included restrictions on imports and regulations to favour domestic firms in procurements
by state-owned enterprises, new certification requirements for cement and pharmaceuticals, as well as restrictions on transit. Russia also announced plans for introducing require-
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