Forbes: Makhachkala is listed in top 10 best cities for business

According to the rating of the Russian cities compiled by the Forbes magazine, five cities in southern Russia are the most convenient to do business. The first place among the 30 presented cities went to Sochi, the 10^th place to Krasnodar, and the 7^th place to Makhachkala. The rating caused ambiguous reaction of the Runet users.

The 30^th place in the rating, which was published on the Forbes website on May 30, went to Rostov-on-Don, and the 26^th place to Astrakhan. Moscow and Saint Petersburg occupied the 27^th and the 29^th places in the rating, respectively.

According to clarifying article prior to the rating, this is the fourth similar research of the magazine, which for the first time took into account results of the questioning of readers, and, ultimately, the cities with the lowest administrative pressure, with tax officials tolerant to the businesses, and with available finances became the leaders.

The authors of the study clarify, that at the first phase of the study, from 63 Russian cities with populations more than 300,000 citizens they selected top 30 on the following parameters: number, income, and growth of population and its growth of its income.

The evaluation criteria included: lack of qualified and unqualified staff, inaccessibility of financial resources, lack of adequate infrastructure, administrative barriers and tax administration. The criteria were selected after studying the research of the Russian Economic School and Ernst & Young "Measuring business climate in Russian regions", and the research of entrepreneurial climate in the Russian regions conducted by the World Bank at the request of the NGO "OPORA Rossii" and "Doing Business in Russia". The authors of that studies questioned entrepreneurs to find out what factors most prevent them from doing business in Russia, the magazine article reports.

Further, the authors of the study measured the situation in each of the 30 cities on each criterion, based on number of graduates of institutions of higher education and vocational schools per 1000 inhabitants, number of banking service points in the city and volume of loans per 1000 of registered legal entities, period for receipt of a land plot for construction, cost of connecting to electric networks, tariffs, number of lawsuits lost by tax inspections and online questioning of readers of the Forbes.ru website, which was held in April-May 2012.

As a result, the top 5 of the rating included Sochi, Ufa, Chelyabinsk, Tyumen, and Nizhny Novgorod. Makhachkala occupied the 7^th place, ahead of Krasnodar with its 10^th place and behind, apart from the above mentioned cities, Ekaterinburg only.