Sept. 7 – A recent survey of transnational corporations found that companies see China and India as the world’s first and second most important destinations for foreign direct investment over the 2010 to 2012 period, respectively.

The World Prospectus Survey 2010-2012 was released yesterday by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), showing that China has once again retained title of the world’s most important FDI destination. India, meanwhile, overtook the United States to claim the survey’s second spot as the U.S. economy continues to struggle.

The figure below shows the top priority host economies for FDI for the 2010 to 2012 period (the number of times that the country is mentioned as a top priority for FDI by transnational corporations). The number in parenthesis is the country’s rank in last year’s UNCTAD survey.

The figure below shows prospects for respondent companies’ FDI expenditures in 2010 to 2012 as compared to 2009 by home region (average of responses from the transnational corporations surveyed) with 0 indicating no change, 1 indicating an increase of less than 10 percent, 2 indicating an increase between 10 percent and 30 percent, 3 indicating an increase between 30 percent and 50 percent, and 4 indicating an increase of more than 50 percent.