business

Updated: Sep 30, 2015 07:20 IST

India has emerged as the most favoured destination for foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2015 so far, outpacing China and the US, London-based business daily Financial Times (FT) said in a report on Tuesday.

FDI inflows into India during January-June stood at $31 billion, ahead of China’s $28 billion and the US’s $27 billion, said the FT report under the headline ‘India grabs investment league pole position’.

Separately, India also jumped 16 notches to 55 among 140 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index that ranks countries on the basis of parameters such as institutions, macroeconomic environment, education, market size and infrastructure among others.

According to data from FDI Markets, an FT data service, FDI inflow into India grew 47% to $24 billion in 2014, a year when many other major FDI destinations posted declines. This could shape up to be an even better year for investment into India, FT said.

“India is tracking well ahead of where it was at this time last year: it has more than double its mid-year investment levels, attracting $30 billion by the end of June 2015 compared to $12 billion in the first half of last year,” it said.

A ranking of top destinations for greenfield investment (measured by estimated capital expenditure) in the first half of 2015 shows India at number one, having attracted roughly $3 billion more than China and $4 billion more than the US, FT added.

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The report came on a day India’s Foreign Investment Promotion Board, the nodal authority that scrutinises overseas investment proposals, cleared 18 proposals worth about Rs 5,000 crore.

It also followed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meetings these last few days with top global CEOs in the US where he made a strong pitch to turn India into an investment hotspot.

The government’s push for manufacturing comes at a time many global companies are searching for an alternative to China as costs and risks there rise. India has also become the world’s fastest growing major economy ahead of China, where recent shocks have sent ripples across the world.

Last year, the government launched the Make in India initiative vowing to remove bureaucratic sloth, make the country more investor-friendly and rectify processes that has kept the country almost at the bottom — ranked 142 — of World Bank’s ‘ease of doing business’ index.

Read| Make In India: On track, but hurdles remain