In comparison to America and China, India’s GDP might be small, but the wealth amassed by Indian billionaires – estimated at 340.9 billion dollars by the US business magazine Forbes – is nearly 31 per cent of the country’s total GDP. This gives the billionaires nearly three times more weight in the economy than their American counterparts and over ten times of those in China. The net worth of all the Chinese billionaires is just about three per cent of the country’s GDP, while that for the US billionaires is nearly 11 per cent.
According to latest data available with International Monetary Fund (IMF), the GDP size of India, China and the US for 2007 are estimated at 1,089.9 billion dollars, 3,248 billion dollars and 13,794 billion dollars respectively. Forbes said there are a total 42 billionaires in China and 469 in the US with a combined net worth of 95 billion dollars and 1.6 trillion dollars, respectively. The magazine put the number of Indian billionaires at 53.
The GDP share of Indian billionaires’ wealth is more than four times of the global average also. Forbes magazine put the combined wealth of all 1,125 billionaires in the world at 4.4 trillion dollars, which is just about seven per cent of the world’s total GDP size.
