India Is The Most Attractive Investment Destination, Says EY Survey

In what could be termed as an acknowledgement of efforts of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government to form a new resurgent India in terms of business and investment, a latest survey by Ernst & Young (EY) has ranked India as the most attractive investment destination in the world for the next three years.

Here are the key takeaways from The Ready, set, grow: EY's 2015 India attractiveness survey:

• The survey shows that 32 per cent or almost one-third of the business leaders from global corporations preferred India as the investment destination in the world, closely followed by China, countries in Southeast Asia and Brazil

• Among India's most attractive features for doing business, investors rated its vast domestic market and availability of labour, as most appealing

• Eighty-nine per cent of the investors said that investment in infrastructure projects and the 100 Smart City project would be significant

• India has improved its macroeconomic stability up from 70 per cent in 2014 to 76 per cent in 2015

• The ease doing business scenario is up from 57 per cent in 2014 to 67 per cent in 2015

• Both financial inclusion, including Digital India and proposed corporate tax reduction from 30 per cent to 25 per cent, were considered significant by 83 per cent of the respondents

• Implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) and legislation on land acquisition were also mentioned as important for attracting foreign direct investment (FDI). Relaxation in FDI policy was at 68 per cent, up from 8 per cent from the previous year. The report highlights data from fDi Markets data, indicating that in the first six months of 2015, India has become the top FDI destination with $30.8 billion of FDI inflows, moving up from the fifth position in the corresponding period last year

• Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi-national capital region (NCR), Chennai and Pune continue to be the top destinations for FDI investment. Among emerging cities, global business leaders ranked Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Vadodara, Coimbatore, and Visakhapatnam, respectively, as the top five emerging cities for FDI. Investors are showing increased enthusiasm for India's emerging cities with a 79 per cent surge in FDI in 2014, and 21 per cent in metros

• Replicating the buzz around the Make in India program the survey says 55 per cent of respondents were aware of the initiative and those aware of Make in India were more upbeat about expansion plans, with 70 per cent stating that they are likely to expand or relocate their manufacturing facilities to India in the next five years

• More than 60 per cent of the respondents said they had plans to invest in India over the next year and 62 per cent are looking at manufacturing, both to serve the Indian and global markets from India

• The survey showed the political and social stability was at 74 per cent in 2015 as against 59 per cent in the previous year