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The
world’s wealth is in the hands of a few |
By
Steve Smith, IOL Washington correspondent
WASHINGTON,
March 20 (IslamOnline) – The wealth of only several hundred
billionaires in rich countries is well over the combined gross
national products of all the nations of sub-Saharan Africa or those
of the oil-rich regions of the Middle East and North Africa,
according to a Washington-based economic think-tank.
In
a statement by the Institute for Policy Studies, the group said that
497 billionaires registered a whopping collective wealth of 1.54
trillion dollars. This is way above the combined gross national
products of all the nations of sub-Saharan Africa, which stands at
only 929.3 billion dollars, or those of the oil-rich regions of the
Middle East and North Africa 1.34 trillion dollars.
Africa’s
total external debt, as of 1999, stood at 231 billion dollars –
which means that only one sixth of the rich men’s wealth would pay
off all of Africa’s debt. At the end of 1999, annual debt service
payments from Africa amounted to 15.2 billion dollars.
IPS
says it tries to study the list of the world's billionaires every
year and to put their wealth in perspective by comparing it to other
issues also considered “big and important.”
After
10 years of steady growth, the number of billionaires in the world
dropped in 2001 from 551 to 497, as billionaires the world over were
hit by the same recessionary forces that plagued most of the world's
economies.
According
to the latest figures compiled by Forbes magazine, the 497
richest people on earth come from only 43 countries, led by the
United States with 216, Germany with 35, and Japan with 25.
This
collective wealth of the 497 is also greater than the combined
incomes of the poorest half of humanity, says IPS.
Leading
the list yet again is the software mogul Bill Gates, whose wealth
dropped six billion over the past year, but remains at a healthy
52.8 billion dollars , larger than Syria or Tunisia or any of the
countries of Central America.
Gates’
wealth is greater than the unprecedented increase in defense
spending requested by the Bush administration of 48 billion dollars.
Number
two on the list is the much-heralded investor Warren Buffett, whose
35 billion dollars surpasses the GDP's of Croatia, Ecuador, or
Ghana.
Software
billionaires Paul Allen (Microsoft co-founder) and Lawrence Ellison
(Oracle founder) each rack up around 25 billion; each is larger than
Lithuania or the Ivory Coast.
Either
of these two could more than match the amount the U.S. gives in food
stamps each year or triple the budget of the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency without a dent in their lifestyles, says the
think-tank.
The
report notes that this year, when the US chain store Wal-Mart rose
to become the largest firm in the world, founder Sam Walton's widow
and their four children show a collective wealth of over 100 billion
dollars, making them larger than either Hungary or oil-rich Nigeria,
which has the largest population in Africa.
Only
35 women, making up just 7 percent of the total, are on the
billionaire list. But this is hardly surprising, says IPS, since
only 3.9 percent of America's top-paid Chief Executive Officers in
the year 2000 were women.
Over
the decades, U.S.-based billionaires have risen from a third of the
total in the mid-1990s to almost half today. So dominant are
Americans at the top of the heap that nine of the 11 individuals
worth more than 20 billion are from the United States: only
Prince
Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud of Saudi Arabia and the Albrecht brothers
of Germany join that highly exclusive list.
However,
in terms of billionaires per capita, the United States is beaten out
by Switzerland, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Switzerland's
population of 7.2 million includes 13 billionaires, while 12 of Hong
Kong's 6.7 million people are in the club.
Singapore
comes in third, with five billionaires among 3.9 million people.
Surprisingly,
Sweden comes in fifth after the United States in the billionaires
per capita category. Known for its egalitarianism, Sweden
nevertheless has six billionaires among its population of 8.9
million.
