‘Number of Turkey’s millionaires to almost double by 2014’

There will be 20,000 more people with a total wealth of more than $1 million in Turkey by 2014, the Dutch ING bank said on Monday.

ING Bank Personal and Private Banking Assistant General Manager Cenk Tabakoğlu appeared at a press conference to announce the results of an analysis by the bank based on International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank data. In its analysis, the bank suggests that the number of millionaires (in US dollar terms) in Turkey will see a substantial increase from the present 25,000 to exceed 45,000 over the next three years.

According to this analysis, Tabakoğlu said last year the number of people with total liquid capital of over TL 100,000 was 652,000 and this is expected to climb to 739,000. The total liquid capital they possess, on the other hand, is expected to increase from last year’s TL 193.4 billion to over TL 220 billion in 2011 and TL 357 billion by the end 2014.

Turkey has experienced rapid economic growth in the past few years and the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) has increased from just above $2,000 in 2003 to over $10,000 last year. In 2010, the country became the fastest growing economy worldwide following China and Argentina. This swift economic growth was a common experience among some of the world’s major developing economies. And this growth has also translated into more wealth for those countries’ richest people. Referring to the IMF and World Bank data, ING also underlined that the total wealth of higher-income persons in the so-called BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — for example, saw a 26.8 percent rise in the past five years. The same cluster of people in Turkey, however, became 11.4 percent wealthier on average between 2006 and 2010. The number of people in the higher income category, however, increased by 24.9 percent and 9.7 percent in BRIC countries and Turkey, respectively.zaman