India Ranks At 75th Place In Terms Of Money In Swiss Banks

Basel: As per latest reports, India currently ranks at 75th spot in terms of money held by its citizens with banks in Switzerland in a list which is topped by UK.

Last year, India was at 61st spot, whereas till 2007, it used to feature among the top 50 countries in terms of holdings in Swiss banks. The country was ranked highest at 37th place in the year 2004. India was ranked in top-50 continuously between 1996 and 2007, but started declining after that — 55th in 2008, 59th in 2009 and 2010 each, 55th again in 2011, 71st in 2012 and then 58th in 2013.

The latest annual update on Swiss banks, released by Switzerland’s central bank SNB (Swiss National Bank) says that the total money held there by foreign clients from across the world fell by nearly 4  percent to Swiss franc (CHF) 1.42 trillion (about Rs 98 lakh crore) at the end of 2015. CHF is the currency of Switzerland.

In terms of individual countries, the UK accounted for the largest chunk at about CHF 350 billion or almost 25 percent of the total foreign money with Swiss banks.

The US came second with nearly CHF 196 billion or about 14 percent. No other country accounted for a double-digit percentage share, while others in the top-ten included West Indies, Germany, Bahamas, France, Guernsey, Luxembourg, Hong Kong and Panama.

India was ranked 75th with CHF 1.2 billion (about Rs 8,392 crore), which is not even 0.1 percent of the total foreign money in Swiss banks and is the lowest for the country in at least two decades or since 1996 — the first year for which full comparable data is available.

Pakistan was placed higher at 69th place with CHF 1.5 billion — a shade better than 0.1 percent of total foreign money parked with Swiss banks.

India was also lowest ranked among the BRICS nations — Russia was ranked 17th (CHF 17.6 billion), China 28th (CHF 7.4 billion), Brazil 37th (CHF 4.8 billion) and South Africa 60th (CHF 2.2 billion). BRICS is the acronym for an association of the five major national economies of the world — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Others ranked higher than India included Mauritius, Kazakhstan, Iran, Chile, Angola, Philippines, Indonesia and Mexico, while a number of so-called tax havens were also placed above, including Jersey, Cayman Islands, Cyprus, Marshall Islands, Bermuda, Belize, Gibraltar, Isle of Man, Seychelles and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

All offshore financial centres together held CHF 378 billion in Swiss banks. The total for developing countries stood at CHF 207 billion, while the same for the developed countries was much higher at CHF 833 million.