Texas Ranks 1st in Business Climate

Neil McDonald: 1-877-363-3772 • Fax: 432-333-7858 • info@odessaecodev.com [mailto:info@odessaecodev.com] click logo to return to home page back to News Releases Texas Ranks 1st in Business Climate (An excerpt taken from the Site Selection article by Mark Arend in November 2004.) (ODESSA, TEXAS – November 2004) TSite Selection's annual ranking of state business climates has a new pecking order as Texas unseats North Carolina's three-year claim to first place. The Lone Star State had performed well in the contest in recent years, finishing in 6th place in 2003 and third in 2002 -- corporate executives surveyed named the state their first choice that year. But pro-business measures and actual capital investment as tracked by Conway Data's New Plant database combined to catapult Texas into first place in the 2004 ranking. The ranking reflects a combination of factors. Fifty percent of a state's performance is based on a survey of corporate real estate executives in which they were asked to rank their top 10 states according to ease of doing business, overall business costs and related factors. The smaller of the two charts shows the top 10 states in that exercise. The other 50 percent of the ranking is based on the states' performance in four criteria associated with recent business-expansion activity. Texas' not-so secret weapon is the Texas Enterprise Fund (TEF), a US$295-million fund established in 2003 to help lure projects to the state. The governor's office administers the program.