In what could be seen as a huge boost to the city’s infrastructural growth, Coimbatore has been selected by the World Bank as a city that provides good job offers and creates a large number of employable graduates, in a recent study it conducted in Coimbatore.

According to the study titled ‘Competitive Cities for Jobs and Growth’, “Coimbatore, India, is landlocked and is within a country that has plenty of competitor cities of a similar size, yet it has achieved income levels that are double the national average and it has become a center for precision manufacturing, mechanical engineering, and textiles”.

The study was jointly prepared by the Social, Urban, Rural, and Resilience Global Practice and the Trade and Competitiveness Global Practice of the World Bank Group in order to get a knowledge base on what makes cities competitive; to improve the understanding of job creation at the city level; and to establish a foundation for a community of practice on this topic for World Bank Group staff, academia, development partners, and practitioners.

Appreciating the arrival of Multi-National Companies (MNC) like Bosche, Cognizant and Dell in Coimbatore, the study has also observed that more than 20,000 job opportunities have been created, which is expected to triple in the coming three years.

The number of employable graduates stands at a staggering 1.5 lakh each year from the many number of colleges here. The study has also lauded the city’s contribution to the pump market. “Coimbatore is not a well-known name outside of India. yet this booming city of more than two million has since 2000 grown just as fast as Bangalore or Hyderabad, and faster than most of its peers — as the supplier of up to two thirds of the motor pumps produced in that country”.

According to K. Maniraj,President of Kovai Pump Manufacturers Association, Coimbatore is exporting up to 25,000 to 30,000 pumps of whose spare parts are produced by the SMEs all over Coimbatore. “More than 1.5 lakh people are directly involved in the business and are more than 3000 SMEs in Coimbatore,” he added.

It has further appreciated the number of English speaking workforce which is much cheaper when compared with Tier 1 cities. The study has also appreciated the combined involvement and efforts of both the private and the public sectors in developing the industrial city as a hot-spot for both Information Technology and Education.