India-Singapore business set to grow: Stan Chart

The number of Singapore-based companies setting up base in India, about 350 at present, will double in the next five years, according to Standard Chartered Bank.

Similarly, the India-based business community in Singapore would expand to about 5,500 companies from the present 4,000 within the next two-and-a-half years, according to Ravi Manchanda, Managing Director of Standard Bank for business and corporate developments between Singapore and India.

"Singapore, which offers a wide range of tax incentives and charges a low corporate tax of 17 per cent, is one of the most attractive places to do business," said Manchanda, who had been working with global commercial and financial sectors in New York, Holland, London and Hong Kong over the last three decades.

"Indian companies also love to do business in and via Singapore with the rest of the East Asia, including China. They enjoy the benefits of Singapore's free trade agreements with the rapidly-expanding economies of China and South-East countries," he pointed out.

India's January-February 2010 exports to Singapore had increased by 42.5 per cent to SGD 1.86 billion while imports had gone up by 20 per cent to SGD 2.4 billion.