G Seetharaman

Mumbai: India has less than 1 lakh dollar millionaires today.

In 9 years, it will have four times as much, or 411,000 millionaires, says a wealth report by UK-based Barclays bank.

A dollar millionaire is anyone with $1 million (Rs 4.1 crore) or more in assets.

Last October, another wealth report that was released by the world’s No. 2 investment bank Merrill Lynch and information technology firm Capgemini put the number of dollar millionaires in India in 2006 at around 100, 000 and placed India second in the list of the fastest-growing dollar millionaire populations in the world.

By 2017, Barclays expects the overall networth of India’s dollar millionaire households to touch $1.7 trillion.

That would be two-and-a-half times India’s current gross domestic product, while it predicts China’s would be less than half that, at $795 billion.

But China is predicted to take the third place in the Household Wealth Index by 2017, as opposed to India’s eighth because China would have a mass affluent base (people with $100,000 or more) of 7.6 crore compared with around 3 crore in India.

Satya Narayan Bansal, chief executive of Barclays Wealth India, said inherited wealth, promoters’ wealth, contribution of top professionals and celebrities will be the four key components in the rise of number of dollar millionaires in India.

“As far as wealthy Indians’ investment avenues are concerned, real estate constitutes 43% of their wealth and gold savings amount to $200 billion, though it is still less than 10% of their wealth.”

But he expected them to significantly shift from physical assets to financial assets by 2017.

Source : DNA