UAE to have four new millionaires every day

With the local economy surging ahead due to projects undertaken for the prestigious Expo 2020, more than 7,700 new millionaires will be created by 2019, according to a new report.

There were 50,595 millionaires in the UAE by the end of 2014, Emirates 24/7 quoted WealthInsight as saying.

The country is likely to have 58,335 millionaires in five years’ time – an increase of 15 percent over the 2014 statistic, translating into 1,548 new millionaires every year, or 4.2 millionaires every day of the year for the next 5 years, the report said.

This number is also a massive 40 percent increase on the 35,960 millionaires the UAE had in 2010, which translates into an annual growth of 8.9 percent, it added.

GCC-wide, Saudi Arabia, the largest economy in the region, had 49,168 high net worth individuals at the end of last year while the number in Qatar stood at 34,785, the report pointed out.

A previous Wealth-X and UBS World Ultra Wealth Report 2014, states that the UAE is ranked No. 22 in the world according to the number of multimillionaires the country has, ahead of global heavyweights such as Russia, Argentina and Sweden, said the Dubai-based news portal.

The report also showed that the UAE has a total of 1,275 multimillionaires in the UAE, up from 1,050 last year. These individuals now hold a collective $255 billion in net wealth among them, up from $190 billion last year.

Regionally, Middle Eastern millionaires are expected to grow at a fast pace, at an average growth rate of 4.1 percent between 2015 and 2019 and the total number of the Middle Eastern millionaires is expected to reach 226,809 by 2019, Emirates 24/7 reported.

Millionaire population in the Gulf region grew by a CAGR of 8.1 percent from 136,195 individuals in 2010 to 185,816 individuals in 2014, it said.

The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar accounted for more significant proportions of millionaires than other Middle Eastern markets such as Iraq and Jordan, the report added.