Gaborone has 1,200 millionaires � report
Mbongeni Mguni | Thursday September 3, 2015 14:10
The report is the country’s first peek into a dataset regarded as highly private and where individuals concerned traditionally seek to limit access or public scrutiny.
The pioneering report, which was released yesterday, was compiled by leading Sandton, Johannesburg wealth research firm, New World Wealth, assisted by Mauritian bank, AfrAsia Bank. The report contains data as at June 2015.
According to the research, the number of US dollar millionaires in Gaborone ranks the city 15th overall in Africa, falling far below powerhouses such as Johannesburg, which is first with 23,400 individuals and Cairo, second with 10,200. Other regional cities ahead of Gaborone include, Cape Town, Durban, Pretoria and Windhoek, while those below include Mombasa, Maputo, Lusaka and Kinshasa.
The latest report suggests that Gaborone houses close to half the USD millionaires in Botswana. A New World Wealth report released early last month pegged the number of Botswana-based USD millionaires at 2,600 individuals, and the country’s per capita income at US$6,620 up from US$2,460 in the year 2000. The same report estimated that the number of USD millionaires in the country would increase by 38 percent in the next 10 years, to 3,600.
New World Wealth Analyst, Andrew Amoils previously told Mmegi that the Sandton research team 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. 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 said.
Amoils added that they 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,” he said.