Finance

How important Joburg is to the rest of the financial world

Staff Writer

 ·28 Mar 2017

London think-tank, Z/Yen, has published its annual Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI 21), detailing the most important financial centres around the world.

GFCI 21 uses 24,068 financial centre assessments collected from 3,009 financial services professionals who responded to the GFCI online questionnaire. The index was compiled using 101 instrumental factors including quantitative measures provided by third parties including the World Bank, The Economist Intelligence Unit, the OECD and the United Nations.

Year on year, there were no changes in the top five positions with London, New York, Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo still considered the key financial hubs.

South Africa

Johannesburg is currently the only South African financial centre to feature on the list, ranking at 59. It saw its rating decline by 2 points over the last year, placing it behind the Isle of Man and just in from of Trinidad and Tobago in order of importance.

It is considered to be the second most important financial centre on the African continent, behind Morocco’s Casablanca, and as a connectivity and diversity hub.

It is considered a primary financial centre (compared to Cape Town, which is considered an “associate centre”) because of its unique position to connect Africa to the rest of the world (both geographically and from an infrastructure point of view) and because of the the breadth of its financial industry sectors compared to its neighbours.

Joburg is ranked below the likes of Brussels, and Milan, and is ahead of Mexico City, São Paulo, and Mumbai.

Highest ranking countries in Africa and the Middle East

Read: Looking for funding for your start-up? This is how much you can expect to get in Cape Town vs Johannesburg