According to an UNCTAD survey, India has emerged as the third most attractive prospective destination for setting up research centres by the world's largest corporations looking to expand their R&D activities worldwide during 2005-09.
According to media reports, the country is only the second developing economy after China in the radar of the world's largest R&D-spending Transnational Corporations, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development has said.
In its World Investment Report 2005 - Transnational Corporations and the Internationalisation of R&D, UNCTAD said China is the most attractive R&D location with 61.8 per cent of the respondents identifying it as a preferred location. The United States was ranked second with 41.2 per cent, followed by India with 14.7 per cent of those surveyed marking the country as a prospective location for R&D in 2005-09.
Japan, United Kingdom, Russia, France, Germany, The Netherlands and Canada completed the top ten list of preferred places for setting up research centres. Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand and Brazil were the other developing countries in the top 30.
Unctad said TNCs, which together pumped in over US$300 billion in research during 2002, would spread their R&D network worldwide including in developing countries.
In terms of the current foreign locations of R&D, India ranks second with 25 per cent of those responding to the survey saying they had research centres in the country.
United States and United Kingdom emerged as the top two destinations, followed by China, France and Japan in the 2004 survey, the UN body said