HYDERABAD: Hyderabad was the 14th-fastest growing city in the world during 2014-16, says a recently released study by Brookings India. The study, Global Metro Monitor 2018, ranked 300 largest metropolitan economies of the world using their per capita GDP and growth in employment. In fact, Hyderabad has performed better than world-famous metropolis like Los Angeles and Mumbai.
The only other Indian city better than Hyderabad, as per the study, is Delhi, which has been ranked 6.
So, what worked in favour of Hyderabad? The study says it was the strong growth in employment. Hyderabad recorded a 5.4 per cent growth in jobs during the 2014-16 period and clocked per capita GDP growth of 8.7 per cent.
In comparison, Delhi registered a job growth of just 4.7 per cent and GDP of 6.6 per cent. This means that though Delhi is much higher in absolute numbers, Hyderabad grew faster. The study also highlighted the inequity in income and growth between rural and urban areas. According to it, these 300 metropolitan cities contributed about half of the world’s production with just 1/4th of its workforce. “Economic activity and growth between 2014 and 2016 remained disproportionately concentrated in the world’s major metropolitan areas,” it study.
What do these metropolitan cities have that others don’t? It’s the density and ‘connectedness’ of urban areas, says the report, apart from lower transportation costs and shared pools of labour, infrastructure and knowledge. Both Hyderabad and Delhi were categorized as emerging Asia Pacific regions, outside of China. In all of Asia, Hyderabad had seen the fastest GDP growth.