Observed star-formation rates vs. the mass of dense gas residing at visual extinctions A_V > 7 mag. Yellow symbols give the properties of molecular clouds within about 500 pc from sun compiled by Lada et al. (2010). Green crosses plot data for several degree-sized regions in the CMZ from Longmore et al. (2013a), as indicated by small labels. The large green cross applies to the | ℓ | ≤ 1° region largely explored by this paper. The red bullets give masses and star-formation rates for individual CMZ clouds determined in this paper building on data for methanol masers and H ii regions. The red error bar in the lower right corner indicates the statistical uncertainty in SF rate that holds for the CMZ clouds containing few H ii regions or none. This excludes Sgr B2, for which much lower statistical uncertainties apply. The nearby red arrow indicates the reduction in SF rate for the same clouds with H ii regions if a flatter IMF is adopted. The black dashed line indicates a fit to the solar neighborhood data taken from Lada et al. (2010). The gray dashed line gives a relation with a star-formation rate lower by a factor 10.