econmy size

[Narayan S. Raja]

On Wed, 17 Nov 1999, Swaminathan Madhuresan wrote:

> tv was broadcasting about us china trade agreements, there was mention
> that china is a 4 trillion $ economy. how much is indian gdp in 1998?
> range: 2 trillion or 1 trillion or 500 billion??

Use of the number "4 trillion US$" indicates
that the GNP was measured in Purchasing
Power Parity (PPP) terms.  In PPP terms,
India's GNP is about US$ 1.6 trillion.

PPP is a method of adjusting the exchange rates
to account for the fact that living expenses
in different countries are different.

In nominal terms (i.e., without adjusting exchange
rates), the Chinese GNP is approx US$ 1 trillion,
whereas the Indian GNP is about US$ 400 million.

By either measure, the Chinese economy is currently
about 2.5 times bigger than the Indian economy.

Regards,


Raja.