Why HSBC says India is better than China or the US for expats

Expats gave India higher marks in cost of raising children, ease of integrating with the locals

While India may be known for its oppressive pollution, poverty and bureaucracy, it’s a better place to be sent to work than China or even the United States according to a recent survey.

An HSBC report that tried to break down what it’s like to be an expatriate in different countries this week surprisingly ranked India ahead of the world’s two biggest economies.

In its HSBC Expat Explorer 2016 report based on an online survey of 27,000 expats this year, the bank ranked India 26th out of 45 countries. While that is on the bottom half of the rankings, the US did worse at 30th as did China at 34th.

How is that possible?

One factor was the Indian economy. Even though it is decades behind China and the US it is still the fastest growing major economy in the world right now. That means globe-trotting executives and entrepreneurs don’t feel like they have been relegated to the backwaters when they work in India.

“More than half (51%) of expats in India believe the country is a good place for them to progress their career, compared with 42% across Asia-Pacific,” said the report, which ranked India 10th for “entrepreneurship,” better than China which got the 16th rank. India was also rated by expats as “a good place to start a business,” about 7% more than China in the region.

“Expats in India are also able to save more, with 44% saying that living there has accelerated their progress towards making longterm savings and investments, compared with 39% across the region,” said the report.

More important for the rankings this year though was family and friends.

The expats who responded to the HSBC survey gave India much higher marks in terms of ease of integrating with the locals as well as cost of raising children.

Of course the report also showed how India continues to underperform in many areas including quality of life and safety.

India’s overall ranking slipped this year. Last year it was 17th out of 39 countries just below the US but still better than China.

“The slight drop in India’s ranking is due to a range of factors, for example, expat parents in India have reported that the country is more expensive to bring up a child than last year,” said the bank when asked about India’s lower ranking this year.

Why did India, China and the US perform worse than last year? That’s because they faced new competition from 6 other countries which were not a part of last year’s survey, including Norway and Austria which were ranked 6th and 7th in 2016.

On the top of the rankings this year was Singapore, New Zealand and Canada.

Source: The Wall Street Journal