India among most entrepreneur-friendly nations: Global poll

LONDON: India along with US, Canada and Australia, has been ranked among the nations with the best cultures in the world for people to start a new business, a new global poll has showed.

While India finds itself bracketed with the better ranked countries, Colombia, Egypt, Turkey, Italy and Russia are the least friendly to innovation and entrepreneurship, showed results of the 24-country BBC World Service poll.

The world's two major economies - US and China - are also among the most favourable countries for innovation and creativity, according to the results.

In both nations, 75 per cent say that their country values innovation and creativity -- second only to Indonesia (85 per cent), and well ahead of other emerging economies such as Brazil (54 per cent) and India (67 per cent).

At the other end of the scale, only 24 per cent of Turks and 26 per cent of Russians and Egyptians say they feel that innovation and creativity is valued in their country.

The results are drawn from a survey of 24,537 adult citizens across 24 countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Spain, Turkey, the UK, the US, among others.

Most countries surveyed in Asia were found to have a well-developed entrepreneurship culture, and except Pakistan, all had good ratings on the entrepreneur-friendly index.

Indonesia scored the highest ratings of all participating countries in the survey (2.81), just ahead of the US.

India and Australia were ranked fourth (2.73) and fifth (2.72), while China and the Philippines also rate relatively high (2.66 and 2.62 respectively).

Pakistan with a rating of only 2.35 on the index was below the global average of 2.49.

However, almost all countries in the region have solid majorities saying that there are some barriers to starting a new business in their country.

Chinese and Filipinos are the most likely to think this way (76 per cent), followed by Indians (72 per cent) and Indonesians (69 per cent), all above the global average of 67 per cent.

The GlobeScan poll features in a series of special reports on the BBC's international news services, called Extreme World.

The GlobeScan/PIPA survey of more than 24,000 people asked people how hard they felt it was for people like them to start a business in their country, whether their country values creativity and innovation, whether it values entrepreneurs and whether people with good ideas can usually put them into practice.

Taking all four questions into account, Indonesia ranked highest as the most entrepreneur-friendly of the countries surveyed, followed closely by the US.

The poll found that majorities in 23 out of 24 countries polled thought it was hard for people like them to start a business in their country.

Brazilians emerge as the most downbeat, with 84 per cent agreeing that this is the case.

Germans are the most upbeat, with less than half feeling it is hard to start a business in Germany (48 per cent), and Australians (51 per cent) and Canadians (55 per cent) also relatively positive compared to other nations.

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