04/27/2010
LED Ranked Second Best Performing State Economic Development Agency In The U.S.
Leading economic development publication
recognizes LED for first time
BATON ROUGE, La. -- Yesterday, Site
Selection magazine announced its 2009 Competitiveness
Awards, which recognize excellence on the part of state-level
economic development groups. According to Site
Selection, Louisiana Economic Development appeared in the
ranking's top 10 for the first time, placing second best.
Virginia Economic Development Partnership, with 410 points based
on Site Selection's quantitative ranking
criteria, edged out LED (393 points) for the top spot. Texas (392),
Tennessee (375) and Pennsylvania (371) rounded out the top five,
respectively.
"Since day one we have made economic development our top
priority," said Gov. Bobby Jindal. "From cutting business taxes to
strengthening ethics laws to reforming workforce development
programs, we have been aggressively positioning Louisiana's economy
to outperform the South and the U.S. on a regular basis. Without
question, we have made incredible progress in increasing
Louisiana's economic competitiveness, and we're going to stay
focused and keep working hard so that we can position our state to
consistently show up among the top states in economic development
rankings, and more importantly, create even more good jobs for our
people."
Since January 2008, LED has secured business development
projects that create more than 35,000 new direct and indirect jobs
and more than $4.6 billion in new capital investment. Last year
Southern Business & Development
magazine named Louisiana Co-state of the Year (along with
Tennessee) for having more significant business development wins
per capita than any other Southern state.
"Our goal from the start has been to transform LED into one of
the top three state economic development agencies in the U.S., so
we're obviously delighted to receive this recognition from Site Selection," said LED Secretary Stephen
Moret. "We are especially grateful and fortunate that Gov. Jindal
and the Legislature have provided us the new tools necessary to
secure this terrific outcome, including our Business Expansion and
Retention Group, the Louisiana FastStart™ program and the State
Economic Competitiveness Group, as well as continued support for
the Rapid Response Fund and Mega Project Development Fund."
The Site Selection rankings calculate
the total points a state-level economic development agency received
based mainly on Conway Data Inc.'s New Plant Database of new and
expanded facilities. The following 10 criteria were used in the
indexing system:
- Total new and expanded facilities in 2009
- Total new and expanded facilities in 2009 per 1 million
population
- Total capital investment in new and expanded facilities in
2009
- Total capital investment in new and expanded facilities per 1
million population in 2009
- Total new jobs created in 2009
- Total new jobs created in 2009 per 1 million population
- Rank in the corporate real estate executive portion of the 2009
Site Selection Business Climate
Ranking
- State Gross Domestic Product per 1 million population
- State unemployment rate February 2010
- Business Incubation Index component of the Beacon Hill
Institute's State Competitiveness Report for 2009
Site Selection magazine, published by
Conway Data Inc., delivers expansion planning information to 44,000
executives of fast-growing firms. Now in its 56th year, Site Selection is also the official publication
of the Industrial Asset Management Council.
