Local US dollar millionaires
Mbongeni Mguni | Friday August 1, 2014 16:35
A Sandton, Johannesburg wealth research firm, New World Wealth, estimates that in 2003, Botswana had approximately 1,600 US dollar millionaires with the figure more than doubling in the following 10 years. In a brief provided to BusinessWeek this week, New World Wealth Analyst, Andrew Amoils said the number of US dollar millionaires in Botswana was expected to reach 3,300 by 2023, representing a 43 percent increase over the next 10 years.
The New World Wealth report is the country’s first peek into a dataset regarded as highly private and where the individuals named have naturally sought to limit access or public scrutiny.
According to Amoils, the Sandton research teams sources a large portion of its information on High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI) from company and director databases.
“We also have access to various luxury goods databases with a focus on prime property, yacht, art and private jet owners,” he said. “The business interests of these individuals are calculated using company holdings. “We then track earnings, liquidity events and wealth events as they occur in order to calculate liquid and investable assets. “Liquidity event tracking also allows us to find new HNWIs as they emerge.” He added: “We also consider the number of million dollar homes in each area as a sanity check when calculating city, state and suburb numbers.
“Asset allocation statistics are based on a combination of surveys conducted by New World Wealth on wealth management companies, fund management companies and individual HNWIs in each country.”
Ironically, the new figures come as the United Nations’ Human Development Report 2014 released on Tuesday places Botswana among countries with the most extreme wealth inequalities in the world.
The United Nations Development Programme report, entitled Sustaining Human Progress, focuses in part on the vulnerabilities associated with human development.
The Report placed Botswana among countries whose modest economic growth was being unwound by widening economic inequality. “A country’s economic status and performance can look much less impressive when adjusted for income distribution,” UNDP researchers noted.
“Botswana, Brazil and Chile have large adjustments to Gross National Income per capita due to high inequality.”
Botswana slipped a rung in this year’s Human Development Index standings, being ranked at number 109 out of 187 countries.