MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazil: 0.75% of population dominates 50% of GDP

An estimated 130.000 Brazilians have financial assets valued at over a million US dollars which totals 573 billion US dollars, well above half the country's GDP, according to a report published Sunday in Folha de Sao Paulo.

However these sums only refer to financial assets and bank accounts, points out the newspaper report which was made with data from the Internal Revenue Office and The Boston Consulting Group which is planning to release the full report sometime next September. Between 2003 and 2005, Brazil with a population of 189 million climbed from position 18 to 14 regarding the number of millionaires in the country. Among emerging economies Brazil overtook India and Russia and is only behind China, points out the report. The total fortune of Brazil's millionaires jumped from 540 billion in 2003 to 573 billion in 2005, which is equivalent to 53.7% of the country's GDP. The increase in assets of the richest Brazilians can be explained by the stabilization of the country's economy and the stock exchange. Since the arrival of Socialist president Lula da Silva in 2002 the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange index has multiplied by five. Gabriel Ulysses, researcher from the Sao Paulo Applied Economics Research Institute argues that Brazil's social balance remains unchanged with "10% of the population holding 80% of the country's overall income".