Kentucky comes in first in new facility openings and third in overall successful business expansion according to national economic development magazine Site Selection.
The publication released its 2015 Business Climate Ranking which sees the Commonwealth at 3rd – a five place leap from last year – just behind Georgia and North Carolina.
“This ranking reflects the culmination of my administration’s focus on economic development. Since January 2008, we announced nearly 2,300 new or expanding facilities, bringing more than 86,000 jobs and a total investment of $19.2 billion into Kentucky,” said Governor Steve Beshear.
The rankings' methodology is based 50% on surveys from corporate site selectors and 50% on seven criteria including performance in Site Selection’s annual Competitiveness ranking; total New Plant Database compliant facilities in 2014; total new facilities in 2014 per capita; total 2015 new projects year to date; total 2015 projects year to date per capita; state tax burdens on mature firms and on new firms according to the Tax Foundation and KPMG Location Matters analysis.
The rankings note Kentucky as leading in the number of new facilities per capita for 2015 with many of those being manufacturing plants.
According to the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development, the state has seen an investment of more than $2.7 billion and more than 8,000 new jobs added since January. A comprehensive report from January to October can be found here.
Site Selection magazine, published by Conway Inc., delivers expansion planning information to 48,000 executives of fast-growing firms.
