London retains number one world city rank

London has retained its rank as the number one city in the world shrugging off Brexit worries, according to Global Power City Index (GPCI).

The GPCI, published by the Mori Memorial Foundation, ranked London as number one for the sixth year in a row, highlighting the city's strengths in, its cultural offer and transport links and its rank as a major centre for innovation.

The report, released on Thursday, ranked 44 major cities across six key measures including the economy, research and development, culture, accessibility, the environment and livability, Xinhua news reported.

London performed strongly across all areas, ranking ahead of other cities such as New York, Tokyo, Paris and Singapore, and was ranked first for culture, with overseas tourists making a record 19.1 million visits to the city in 2016.

A study by Oxford Economics commissioned to coincide with the GPCI, reported that London's economic growth is expected to be stronger than many other European cities. London's GDP growth is set to be 2.4 per cent a year until 2021, outperforming a number of other major European cities including Paris, Frankfurt and Berlin.

London's growth is predicted to be greater than the average GDP growth of all eurozone nations, which is forecast to be 2 per cent.

Richard Holt, Oxford Economics head of global cities research, told Xinhua: "London by European standards is a super competitive city, in terms of skills, the property market, and across a whole range of indicators"

"When you look at sectors, say the digital communications sector, services or tourism you see it performing well.

"We take that as the underlying driver and put it together with a cyclical pattern and at the moment the UK economy is not performing as well as the eurozone economy, to give a view of what is going to happen to London."

Brexit is the major event of the coming years, and Holt said this had been considered and would have an effect on London's growth.

"What we have in our forecast is a fairly modest number of jobs in the financial services sector moving from London to elsewhere in Europe, based on what the banks themselves have been saying," he said.

"We have not put in a huge exodus of jobs from London, that is not to say that it will not happen but at the moment we have no evidence it will," Holt added.

--IANS

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