Thirty-two per cent of the business leaders from global corporations polled for the survey, according to which India is the most attractive investment destination in the world, followed by China, Southeast Asia and Brazil.
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He further said, the government will look at the foreign direct investment policy “with a very open mind”.
India has been ranked among the most attractive investment destination across the globe – this rating is supposed to be for the next three years.
The same is also true for relaxation in FDI policy (the score improved from 60 per cent in 2014 to 68 per cent in 2015) and the government’s efforts to ease doing business (up from 57 per cent in 2014 to 67 per cent in 2015).
India has already emerged as the top FDI destination with the country attracting $30.8 billion across of investment in the first half of the year, the report said with a major chunk flowing into manufacturing.
Lauding the investment friendly atmosphere in India, the investors rated its vast domestic market and availability of labor as the most lucrative features.
“Over the a year ago, the improvements in India’s macroeconomic indicators, accompanied with the ongoing efforts to revitalize growth have offered new hope to investors”, said Rajiv Memani, chairman of the global emerging markets committee and India regional managing partner at EY. While most of the respondents believed that the government had worked towards ensuring a better environment for business, it would need to work in areas of infrastructure, enhance ease of doing business and transparency, streamline taxation, implement economic reforms and simplify labour laws to attract more capital.
Manufacturing was the big draw in the survey with over 55 per cent respondents recognising that they had heard about Make in India and 69 per cent of those willing to invest in manufacturing in the next five years.
Most of these respondents prefer to expand existing operations, followed by expansion through acquisitions.
“We are driving one- and three-year action plans across ministries so that we all work as a team to make India a manufacturing destination”, says Kant.
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Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Chennai and Pune continue to be the top destinations for FDI inflows with comparatively smaller cities such as Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Vadodara, Coimbatore and Visakhapatnam emerging as the as the top five cities for FDI, the survey found. “Investors increasingly see the potential and understand the fundamentals”.
