TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ MONDAY, MARCH 14, 2005 09:47:56 PM ]
NEW DELHI: The list of the world's billionaires put out by Forbes reveals some truly startling data. India, for instance, ranks 8th in the world in terms of the number of billionaires and 9th in terms of the total wealth of the super rich, ahead of several "rich" countries.
But before you start seeing this as evidence of "India shining", consider another statistic. The average Indian billionaire's wealth is equivalent to almost 9 million times the country's per capita GDP.
To put that figure in perspective, the average Norwegian billionaire's wealth is only about 42,000 times his country's per capita GDP and for most of western Europe, the figure is either in tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands.
Even the US, certainly not among the most egalitarian economies, has a relatively modest figure of about 79,500. Only in the developing world does the ratio cross a million, and even there, the closest to India is Egypt at 4.7 million. This is really not as surprising as it may initially seem.
Outside the OECD, only Russia (27 billionaires) and Hong Kong (15) have more in the billion club than India. On the flip side, India has the lowest per capita GDP ($571) of all the countries in the list, Indonesia and Philippines being the only others with per capita GDPs of under $1,000. At the other end of the spectrum, Norway has a per capita GDP of $ 49,000.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1051450.cms
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