Rich Are Leaving India – 61,000 Indian Millionaires Have Migrated Overseas In Last 14 Years
Money is draining out of India at a faster rate than we had imagined.
A new report by New World Wealth and LIO Global declares India as the country which experienced 2nd highest migration of high net worth individuals to overseas, after China. In the last 14 years (from 2000 to 2014), 61,000 Indian millionaires have settled in other countries, which second only to China where 91,000 millionaires shifted base abroad.
As per the report, this mass exodus of rich people from developing countries to developed countries is happening because of better life style and more security.
Nadia Read, head of world residence and citizenship platform LIO Global said, “The main reason people apply for a second residence or citizenship is to ensure freedom of global mobility and access, as well as security and wealth protection for their families.“
Some interesting highlights from the report:
- UK is the most preferred destination for high net worth individuals from all over to world, when it comes to migration. In the last 14 years, 125,000 HNWIs have migrated to UK, where 8,40,000 millionaires are right now staying. Most of these immigrations happened from Europe, China, India and Russia
- Top 8 countries where maximum ‘inflow’ of HNWIs happened: UK (125,000); USA (52,000); Singapore (46,000); Australia (35,000); Hong Kong (29,000); UAE (18,000); Canada ( 17,000); Turkey (12,000)
- With 4.1 million millionaires, USA is the country with most of the HNWIs (both domestic and immigrants)
- Top 8 countries which resulted in maximum ‘outflow’ of HNWIs are: China (91,000); India (61,000); France (42,000); Italy (23,000); Russia (20,000); Indonesia (12,000); South Africa (8,000); Egypt (7,000).
- 608,500 millionaires are already in China (end of 2014), compared with 226,800 in India and 323,000 in France
- Indian HNWIs are moving to US, UK, UAE and Australia; whereas Chinese rich are shifting base to US, Singapore, Hong Kong and UK
- India has been ranked 10 in the world, in terms of millionaire count.
Some reasons which has been attributed to this mass exodus of high net worth individuals to countries like UK: Language, ease of trade, ease of movement, ease of transferring money, strict rules to control crime, quality of education, ease of buying property.
Countries like Singapore have local tax structure, which makes doing business easy and have a cosmopolitan look and feel which attracts rich citizens from other countries.
The survey was conducted by tracking the movements of 60,000 high net worth individuals from all over the world; by observing their citizenship in 2000 and 2014. Another point to note: Millionaire here means USD millionaire, or a person having net worth of at least $1 million.
You can find the full report titled “Second citizenship & the migration of HNWIs 2000 – 2014” here.
Norway is a country where every citizen is now a millionaire. What exactly is missing in India where those who are already millionaires, are leaving the country? We need some serious introspection here.
[Header image source: Shutterstock.com]
