Personal wealth in the UAE may grow to US$1 trillion by 2020, according to the Boston Consultant Group (BCG).
The consultancy is predicting that the compound annual growth rate of private wealth will be 14.1 per cent up to 2020, significantly higher than its neighbours.
Most of that growth in affluence will be driven by an increase in cash deposits held by the wealthy, it said yesterday.
The UAE’s diversified economy has made it more resilient over the past couple of years than some of its fellow Arabian Gulf nations amid the sharpest drop in oil prices since the global financial crisis that began in 2008.
BCG expects Saudi Arabia’s private wealth will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 2.7 per cent from last year to 2020 while Kuwait’s rich will increase their assets at an annual rate of 5.9 per cent in the same period.
That does not mean that the UAE’s neighbours overall will get poorer. Middle East and African wealth is set to reach $11.8tn, from $8tn last year, with about 22.7 per cent of that coming from the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, it said.
When it came to measuring growth in the various strands of the rich, those in the UAE with investable assets ranging between $1 million to $20m last year recorded a higher rate of growth than households with more than $100m in investable assets last year, said the highlights of the report.
The number of people in the UAE who have a fortune of more than $30m fell slightly last year as a slump in oil prices and global economic volatility took a toll, the property consultant Knight Frank said in April.
But the fall to 1,392 individuals from 1,380 in 2014 is seen as a blip in a wider trend towards more of the world’s super-rich flocking to Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Knight Frank said.
mkassem@thenational.ae
Follow The National's Business section on Twitter