Three Canadian cities among world's best centres of commerce

MasterCard index ranks Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver in top 30

Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver were among the top 50 centres for commercial activity in the world, according to a new survey.

The MasterCard Centres of Commerce Index (CCI) ranks the world's top cities in terms of their ability to act as a centre for commercial activity. The index uses a six-dimension framework that includes: laws and politics, economic stability, ease of doing business, financial flow, business centre and knowledge and information flow.

In its first year, the index looked at 2006 data to rank the top 50 cities. It was no surprise that London, New York and Tokyo were the top three cities.

However, with Toronto at number 12, Montreal at number 27 and Vancouver at number 28, Canada has more major urban areas included in the index on a per capita basis than any other country.

The Canadian cities dominated the "ease of doing business" dimension, which includes quality of life measures, health and safety, personal freedom and investor protection.

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