Delhi ranked 6th in world's top 10 best performing metro economies

Delhi may be one of the worst polluted cities in the world, but the metropolitan city surely isn't behind when it comes to economic performance. The megacity has been ranked on the sixth place in terms of best performing metropolitan economies in the world. The five metro cities that have been ranked above Delhi in the 2018 edition of Global Metro Monitor report are Dublin, San Jose, Chengdu, San Francisco and Beijing.

Other Indian metropolitan cities that have been able to secure the place in top 100 metro cities include Hyderabad (ranked 14), Surat (19), Mumbai (23), Bangaluru (46), Kolkata (59), Ahmedabad (86), and Pune (88). This year's sample comprised 300 largest metropolitan economies in the world, based on the size of their economies in 2016 at Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) rates.

The emerging Asia Pacific nations outside of China housed some of the largest-growing metropolitan areas in the world. Together, large metro areas in this region averaged 2.8 per cent annual employment growth (above the region's 1.6 per cent) and 4.9 per cent annual GDP per capita growth (below the region's 5.1 percent).

"Strong performers in India included Delhi and Hyderabad, with Delhi achieving the largest employment increase in the region and Hyderabad boasting the fastest GDP per capita growth rate (8.7 per cent)," says the report. Among the top 10 largest metro areas on the economic performance index, five metropolitan cities are in China. "Metropolitan areas within the top 300 in China (55 new entrants), the Middle East and Africa (10), and the rest of the emerging Asia Pacific (8) have all increased, whereas metro areas in North America, Western Europe and Advanced Asia-Pacific have lost 64 slots in total," says the report.

The report also says that between 2014 and 2016, the 300 largest metro areas accounted for 36 percent of global employment growth and 67 percent of global GDP growth, rates that well exceed their 2016 share of each indicator. "Emerging economy metro areas continued to disproportionately drive growth, accounting for 80 percent of the 60 best-performing metropolitan areas," the report said.

Delhi, which has a population of 1.8 crore, may be performing well on the economic front but it lacks on various other parameters like quality of life. Pollution is one of the biggest problems in the metro city. India accounts for nine of the 10 most polluted cities in the world, of which Delhi is ranked at the sixth spot.