News: India still a hot spot for global services

(DNA 05/04/2007) Mumbai - The world continued to view India as the favourite global services location when collectively measured on parameters such as financial attractiveness, people skills/availability and business environment.

But when judged on the same parameters separately, the sub-continent's rank slips to second on people skills/available and to the sixth position for financial attractiveness, lower than even Pakistan (5th) and Ghana (3rd).

When it comes to business environment, India sinks to 34th position, with even Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania beating it.

On the A T Kearney's Global Services Location Index 2007, India remained steadfast at top of the heap with an overall score of 6.9, with China at close second and fast catching up.

While India's score has remained unchanged from what it was in 2005, China's has moved up 0.4% from 6.2 in 2005 to 6.6 in 2007.Going by China's advancing score, the perception of the dragon as a serious threat to India could possibly be real.

Like India, the occupant of third position - Malaysia's score is also constant at 6.1 for both years. These three countries have held on to their top position since 2005 and have consistently surpassed countries like Singapore (5th), Canada (35th) and Russia (37th).

However, when taken on individual strengths, all the three countries slip down the rank.

Vietnam excels in financial attractiveness followed by Indonesia.

At sixth position, India's score on this count is8.1, which is not toodistant from Vietnam's 8.3. China is at number 16 with a score of 7.3.

In terms of talent pool, India (7.8) is only second to the US (tier II) (9.2), but with a big gap of 1.4. It is being tailed China by just 0.2.

India and China are blown away to 34th and 37th slots respectively on business environment front with scores of 4.9 and 4.6. They are not perceived very highly when rated on economic/political milieu, infrastructure quality, cultural exposure and IP security.