China, India and other Asian markets would be the preferred investment destinations over the next five years, says a survey.
The bullishness in the emerging markets is because of the continued high growth and market size of China and India.
"Without these two countries, emerging market economies would contract this year, although, with the exception of Eastern Europe, they would still fare less badly than developed economies," said the UK Trade and Investment report, prepared in collaboration with the Economist Intelligence Unit.
According to the report, 'Survive and prosper: emerging markets in the global recession', almost 90 per cent of respondents said the global downturn had an adverse impact on their businesses, but emerging markets seem to have supported profitability to a large extent.
Although most survey respondents expressed caution about opportunities in emerging markets over the next two years, they said in the long run the outlook looked promising.
Regarding the risks involved with emerging markets, the report said these markets still face risks such as unclear bureaucratic regulations, poor infrastructure and talent shortages, are some of the greatest obstacles to operations in emerging markets.
A significant proportion of the respondents felt that macro-economic instability and shortage of credit had worsened over the past two years.
The survey said given the relatively poor performance of developed markets over the past two years, companies, arguably, may have more incentive to seek new markets in the emerging world.
Asian markets now dominate the top-ten list of non-BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) future investment destinations to the detriment of markets in Eastern Europe, the report said.
The global survey was conducted in July-August by EIU in over 540 firms from across 19 business sectors. Over 40 per cent of the executives interviewed worked for companies headquartered in emerging markets; the remainder were from companies based in developed countries.
