The World Bank has ranked the Scottish Development International (SDI) sixth in the world amongst national and subnational investment bodies for its work in attracting overseas investment to Scotland. It outranks all other UK agencies.

The Washington-based bank’s global investment promotion benchmarking report for 2009 compared international agencies to assess their performance in attracting inward investors. Produced jointly with two World Bank Group affiliates – the International Finance Corporation and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency – the report looked at the work of 181 countries in influencing foreign investors looking for new global locations.

Scotland’s inward investment and trade promotion agency came sixth after Austria, Copenhagen, Sweden, Germany and Canada. Each agency’s website and two “mystery shopper” projects were assessed. Ranked immediately below Scotland were, in descending order, Manchester, the UK, Ireland, France and London.