 "India has 198,000 dollar millionaires: Study")
India has become home to the 11th largest population of dollar millionaires, with 198,000 such high networth individuals (HNWI), as falling oil prices and "constructive" election results helped the country post the biggest gains in terms of their number and total wealth during 2014.
India recorded the largest gains - for the region and globally - for HNWI population (26.3 per cent) and wealth (28.2 per cent).
"The election of a popular reform-minded prime minister helped to boost investor confidence and contributed to strong performance in the stock market, with a 21.9 per cent increase in the MSCI Index. Lower oil prices helped reduce country's budget deficit and retail inflation fell considerably," a report said.
"All these events helped India moved up to the third place for HNWI wealth across the Asia-Pacific, displacing Australia, which suffered from a significant 7.6 per cent decline in equity markets," it added.
According to the World Wealth Report 2015, released by Capgemini and RBC Wealth Management, there were 198,000 HNWIs in India in 2014, while in 2013 the figure stood at 156,000.
India has been ranked 11th on the list of countries with the highest number of HNWI population.
The US topped the chart, with 4,351,000 millionaires, followed by Japan, 2,452,000, Germany (1,141,000) and China (890,000) in the second, third and fourth places, respectively.
The top four countries account for 60.3 per cent of the total worldwide HNWI population.
Globally in 2014, strong economic and equity market performance helped to create 920,000 new millionaires. The number of HNWIs grew to 14.6 million, while their collective wealth surged to $56.4 trillion.
Since 2006, the Asia-Pacific dominated HNWI growth and of the $7.4 trillion of HNWI wealth added in the Asia-Pacific since 2006, India and China accounted for an impressive 43 per cent.
"Continued growth is expected to result in India and China holding over 10 per cent of all global HNWI wealth by 2017," the report said.
"The Asia-Pacific continues its tremendous run in wealth creation and doesn't appear to be slowing down anytime soon," said Barend Janssens, head, RBC Wealth Management, Asia.
China and India, in particular, have propelled the Asia-Pacific HNWI wealth growth in recent years and are expected to continue to act as key drivers, both in the region and globally.
Looking further ahead, HNWI wealth is expected to expand more in the Asia-Pacific than in any other region of the world, with much of the new wealth expected to come from the emerging economies of China, India, Indonesia, and Thailand, the report said.
