India Second Most 'Up and Coming' Destination for Expats: HSBC

New Delhi: India has been ranked as the second most 'up and coming' destination - the countries that are getting better as a place to live and work in - for expats after China, according to a survey by global financial services major HSBC.        

According to the Expat Explorer survey commissioned by HSBC Expat, emerging Asian economies are an attractive destination for challenge-seeking and adventurous expats, with 44 per cent of them saying they made the move for a new challenge.

"India is likely to develop its industrial sector to catch up on infrastructure development, which will happen with the help of overseas funding. It's natural to assume that the foreign funding will bring along foreign human expertise," HSBC India head of retail banking and wealth management Sanjiv Sud said.

Indian economy is consistently growing above 5 per cent every year, and is expected to post a 7.3 per cent growth in 2016, according to HSBC.

Expats in China and in India are also the most confident and have a positive outlook on the local economy with 60 per cent of them sharing the feeling that their host country is getting better as a place to live and work, compared to the 32 per cent global average.

India attracts highly-skilled expats in the construction and engineering sector (19 per cent). Other sectors where expats in India are well represented are telecommunications and IT (21 per cent), and financial services (10 per cent).

The survey further said India has the third largest proportion of expatriates sent by companies for overseas assignments, after Brazil and Turkey,

According to the latest Expat Explorer survey, 26 per cent of expats working in India said they took the overseas assignment because they were sent by their company.

This proportion is the highest in Brazil at 37 per cent, followed by Turkey at 29 per cent. The proportion of expats working on a company secondment is 24 per cent each in case of China and Mexico, the survey said.

"As the global economy re-balances towards emerging and faster-growing markets, there is a greater demand for highly skilled expats in these regions. Therefore, global corporates are sending more and more talented employees to run businesses in countries like India, Brazil and China," Mr Sud said.

The Expat Explorer survey is one of the largest global surveys of expats. This year, nearly 9,300 expats from around the world shared their views on quality of life, financial well-being and the ease of raising a family abroad.