Indian companies favour S'pore for business expansion: Survey

Companies from India favour Singapore as an excellent destination for their businesses to grow, a news channel today said citing a survey.
About 41 per cent of the respondents in India chose Singapore as an excellent destination to grow their business in a survey by communications company BT, reported Channel Channel News Asia.
Furthermore, 47 per cent of respondents in India and 48 per cent in China are currently planning to expand their operations here, the survey released today said.
The survey ranked Singapore as the sixth-most desirable place in the world and third in Asia Pacific by companies looking to expand their business overseas.

Respondents to the survey cited Singapore's potential customer base and affluence of citizens as the most crucial factors contributing to the country's high ranking.
The city state's IT skills, quality of governance and IT security, are also named in the survey as factors attracting businesses to expand here.

Among the Singaporean respondents to the survey, 76 per cent believe that international expansion is highly essential for the success of their organisation.
A total of 84 per cent said that growth opportunities are the main reason prompting them to expand overseas.
Singapore businesses chose the United States and Hong Kong as their favoured destinations for expansion due to their potential customer base, followed by China, Indonesia and Thailand.

The respondents also indicated that the lack of an adequately competent IT infrastructure was one of the key challenges hindering their overseas growth.
A total of 96 per cent of Singapore respondents said they were hindered to some extent by the digital infrastructures of their most desired markets.
The survey, conducted online between April and May this year, covered 1,150 business leaders in 13 regions, including 350 respondents from Asia Pacific.