India, China to be biggest investors by 2030: World Bank

New Delhi, May 17 (IANS) India and China will be the biggest investors by 2030, accounting for 38 percent of the global gross investment and almost half of all the world manufacturing investment, says the World Bank.

“In the gradual convergence scenario, in 2030, China will save far more than any other developing country – $9 trillion in 2010 dollar terms – with India a distant second at $1.7 trillion, surpassing the levels of Japan and the United States in the 2020s,” the World Bank says in a report.

China will account for 30 percent of global investment in 2030, with Brazil, India and Russia together accounting for another 13 percent.

In terms of volumes, investment in the developing world will reach $15 trillion (in 2010 dollars), versus $10 trillion in high-income economies.

China and India will be the largest investors among developing countries, with the two countries combined representing 38 percent of the global gross investment in 2030, and they will account for almost half of all global manufacturing investment, the World Bank’s Global Development Horizons report said.

“In less than a generation, global saving and investment will be dominated by the developing world,” says the report, released Thursday.

By 2030, half the global stock of capital, totalling $158 trillion (in 2010 dollars), will reside in the developing world, compared to less than one-third today, with countries in East Asia and Latin America accounting for the largest shares of this stock, says the report, which explores patterns of investment, saving and capital flows as they are likely to evolve over the next two decades.

Titled “Capital for the Future: Saving and Investment in an Interdependent World”, the report projects developing countries’ share in global investment to triple by 2030 to three-fifths, from one-fifth in 2000.

Productivity catch-up, increasing integration into global markets, sound macroeconomic policies, and improved education and health are helping speed growth and create massive investment opportunities, which, in turn, are spurring a shift in global economic weight to developing countries.

A further boost is being provided by the youth bulge. By 2020, less than 7 years from now, growth in world’s working-age population will be exclusively determined by developing countries.

With developing countries on course to add more than 1.4 billion people to their combined population between now and 2030, the full benefit of the demographic dividend has yet to be reaped, particularly in the relatively younger regions of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, it said.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.