Grant Thornton’s latest International Business Owners Survey on China and India shows China is still preferred over India on various parametres.

Another revelation was that 36 per cent of the Indian business owners export to United States followed by 34 per cent to the UK. But 25 per cent of the US exports happen to China and only 7 per cent to India.

The survey shows:

India lags behind China in almost every respect.

Europe lags the rest of the world in doing business with Mainland China.

Nearly one in five medium-sized businesses in the survey now import from Mainland China.

India and China lead rest of the world by some distance as preferred outsourcing destination

The results of the first independent survey of business owners in Mainland China show that they come fourth among the most confident in the world about the local economy out of thirty surveyed. India, Ireland and South Africa were the first three.

On outsourcing, one in ten of mid-sized businesses worldwide had outsourced operations to another country/territory. Hong Kong topped the outsourcing table (26 per cent of businesses) followed by the US (18 per cent).

The leading destination for outsourcing anywhere in the world was Mainland China — with 31 per cent of respondents already transferring or planning to transfer operations. India was next (27 per cent) followed at a distance by Mexico (8 per cent) and Malaysia (5 per cent).

When the respondents in the thirty countries surveyed were asked for the top three countries that they exported to, United States topped the chart at 20 per cent followed by Germany at 18 and UK at 16 per cent; China was at 12 and India at 5.

B. Ramalinga Raju, chairman of the Hyderabad-based Satyam Computer Services Ltd, has been elected chairman of the National Association of Software and Service Companies for 2006-07. Lakshmi Narayanan, president and CEO of the Chennai-based Cognizant Technology Solutions has been appointed vice-chairman of the IT industry’s lobby.

Mr Raju, who took over from S. Ramadorai, managing director and CEO of Tata Consultancy Services, co-founded Satyam Computer Services in 1987, and over the past nineteen years played a key role in the growth of the company from a fledgling outfit to the fourth largest software services firm in the country. Satyam currently has over 20,000 employees in 50 countries. The company, a part of the BSE Sensex and the NSE Nifty, is also listed on the New York Stock Exchange, with the stock being floated in May, 2001. The company has a market cap of US $6.2 billion.

Speaking about his role, Mr Ramalinga Raju, chairman, Nasscom, said, "I am deeply honored to be elected Nasscom’s chairman for 2006-07."