India saw its millionaires' wealth grow most in 2014

NEW DELHI: India has become home to 11th largest population of millionaires with 1.98 lakh such high net worth individuals (HNIs), as falling oil prices and "constructive" election results helped the country post the biggest gains in erms of their number and total wealth during 2014. India recorded the largest ga ns -for the region and globally -for HNIs 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 he 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 . All these events helped India moved up to third place for HNIs' wealth across 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 1,98,000 HNIs in India in 2014, while in 2013 the figure stood at 1,56,000.

India has been raked 11th in the list of countries with highest number of HNI population. The US topped the chart with 43,51,000 millionaires, followed by Japan at 24,52,000, Germany (11,41,000) and China (8,90,000).

The top four countries account for 60.3 per cent of the total worldwide HNI population. Globally in 2014, strong economic and equity market performance helped to create 920,000 new millionaires. The number of HNIs grew to 14.6 million, while their collective wealth surged to $56.4 trillion.

Since 2006, Asia-Pacific dominated HNI growth and of the $7.4 trillion of HNI wealth added in 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 HNI wealth by 2017," the report said.