The City of Charlottetown was recognized as the Canadian provincial capital with the overall greatest cost advantages for business, in the latest KMPG Competitive Alternatives Study released earlier this week. Prince Edward Island's capital city was also identified in specific categories as having the lowest costs in Canada for precision manufacturing and production of specialty chemicals.
Prince Edward Island Business Development, the lead economic development agency for the province, sponsored Charlottetown's participation in the study. According to the Honourable Mike Currie, Minister of Development and Technology, results such as these assist the province in its active recruitment of investment to the Island.
"A key component of economic development is attracting new business to our province, and there's no doubt that PEI offers some of the best cost advantages to businesses," said Minister Currie. "The KPMG report is a well recognized document and these results will be used in our target marketing efforts."
KPMG's Competitive Alternative report is a comprehensive guide for comparing international business costs and is released every two years. Several critical cost comparisons are factored in, such as tax rates, labour, utility, facility/infrastructure, distribution, investment and operating costs.
Forty-two Canadian cities were compared in the 2002 edition of the report, the most ever used for this particular research initiative. Charlottetown's overall ranking across all 12 sectors in the study was 11th in Canada and 2nd within Atlantic Canada – only Truro, Nova Scotia was found to have lower overall business costs in this region.
"The City is extremely pleased with these results and is grateful to the Province for sponsoring our participation in this project," said Charlottetown Mayor George MacDonald. "Charlottetown is a great place to be doing business and this report confirms it."
As the study is based on population, Charlottetown is the only Island municipality which is included in KPMG's research. There is also an international component to the report in which Canada was identified as the overall cost leader for 2002 with a cost index of 85.5, representing a 14.5% cost advantage over the United States. The US ranked seventh in the study.
For more information on the study, visit www.competitivealternatives.com.