Commentary: India to be 8th Wealthiest Country by 2017?

Barclays Bank has just announced that India and other BRIC countries will join the ranks of the top 10 wealthiest countries by 2017. The report is self serving in that by pronouncing the BRIC’s will join the 10 wealthiest nations, Barclay’s will now open up the doors to their own investment funds to take in your money. It’s an old game played by the best.

"Over the coming decade, the gap in wealth between the world's most developed countries and the leading emerging markets will continue to narrow with many new millionaires being created in India, China, Russia and other countries which are undergoing rapid development," says the Barclays Wealth Report. If true, then we will have to stop calling BRIC countries “emerging”.

The report also says a sudden burst in the wealth of emerging markets has displaced more developed economies such as Portugal, South Korea and Australia from the list. The problem of course with the report is that it’s not focused on per capita wealth which of course is a better measurement of wealth.

For example, let’s say Bill Gates (worth $55 billion) lived on “Island M” with 1000 people on it and each of the 999 islanders made $1 a year. Gates will obviously skew the total wealth figure and the wealth figure will not paint a true picture of the island’s wealth. In contrast if Google were “Island G” and each of the 1000 Googlers made $100,000 a year, the island would have far less wealth than “Island M” ($55 billion vs. $100 million), but each of the Googlers are far wealthier than 999 of the islanders on “Island M” .

In the end, it is good news that India will be one of the wealthiest countries in 2017, but the focus should be on per capita wealth.