plate 344 · 2025 data

South Asia nearly doubled its share of the world economy

Share of world GDP at purchasing power, 2000 vs 2025, by region. IMF estimates; Pakistan counted in South Asia.

India's rise
  1. 1. India now has more working-age people than China
  2. 2. India's UPI now handles 86% as many payments as Visa
  3. 3. Indian students now outnumber Chinese students in the US
  4. 4. India's GitHub developers outnumber China's, Brazil's and Japan's combined
  5. 5. India's stock market grew 23-fold since 2000
  6. 6. Indian phone users now average 25.7 GB a month
  7. 7. India's metro network quadrupled in a decade
  8. 8. India now ships over a third of world rice exports
  9. 9. India went from 1% to 37% of Russia's crude sales
  10. 10. India's wild tigers have more than doubled since 2006
  11. 11. Two in three rickshaws sold in India are electric
  12. 12. Indians now file more patents at home than Germans
  13. 13. India published more science papers than Germany and Britain combined
  14. 14. India now holds more foreign reserves than Saudi Arabia
  15. 15. Open defecation in India fell from 73% to 7%
  16. 16. India's sun and wind now outproduce Germany's
  17. 17. India's landlines have nearly doubled since 2020
  18. 18. India's debit card payments have fallen by three quarters
  19. 19. India climbed from tenth to fifth in patent filings
  20. 20. 13 countries made India their biggest medicine supplier
  21. 21. India now imports more cotton than it exports
  22. 22. South Asia nearly doubled its share of the world economy
5.4% → 10.2%

South Asia's share of world output at purchasing power, 2000 to 2025. India alone went from 3.9% to 8.2%.

2016

South Asia passed Latin America and the Caribbean. It is now 10.2% against 7.2%; Latin America's share was 9.5% in 2000.

3.0% → 3.7%

Sub-Saharan Africa's share, up from 2000 but level since 2010 (3.6%). East Asia and Pacific rose to 32.3%, Europe and Central Asia fell to 23.9%.

Source: IMF, World Economic Outlook database, October 2026: GDP based on PPP, share of world, 2025
the numbers & method
South Asia nearly doubled its share of the world economy. Source: IMF, World Economic Outlook database, October 2026: GDP based on PPP, share of world, 2025.
2000 (%)2025 (%)
East Asia and Pacific21.332.3
Europe and Central Asia31.823.9
North America22.316.0
South Asia5.410.2
Latin America and the Caribbean9.57.2
Middle East and North Africa5.85.8
Sub-Saharan Africa3.03.7

Claim types Estimate

IMF, World Economic Outlook, October 2026 (PPPSH: GDP based on purchasing-power parity, share of world total, %), read from the IMF DataMapper API via the progrss vault (§4.11, imf-weo passes value_checks). Each region is the sum of the IMF's published country shares, using the World Bank regions carried in the vault, with Pakistan counted in South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa without Pakistan and Afghanistan. South Asia = India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives (7; Afghanistan has no value for 2000 and is left out of both years: 0.05% in 2025). Sums are progrss calculations: 2000 / 2025 shares: East Asia and Pacific (29 economies in 2000, 31 in 2025; Macao and Nauru have no 2000 value) 21.34 / 32.32; Europe and Central Asia (51) 31.81 / 23.87; North America (US, Canada) 22.26 / 15.96; South Asia 5.38 / 10.16; Latin America and the Caribbean (34) 9.52 / 7.19; Middle East and North Africa (19) 5.80 / 5.77; Sub-Saharan Africa (46 / 47) 2.96 / 3.66; Taiwan 0.91 / 1.00 is not shown (not in the World Bank regions); rounded to one decimal on the chart. India 3.93 to 8.23; South Asia first exceeded Latin America in 2016 (8.20 against 8.17) and the gap was 3.0 points in 2025. Sub-Saharan Africa: 3.63 (2010), 3.80 (2015), 3.66 (2025). PPP shares compare volumes of output at common prices and differ from market-dollar shares; 2025 is the latest year the IMF reports as data in this edition; 2026 onward are projections and are not used. Claim type: Estimate (modelled PPP series). Middle East and North Africa: 19 economies each year; Syria has values to 2010 only, Yemen from 2015. Sub-Saharan Africa: 46 in 2000, 47 in 2025 (Eritrea has no 2025 value; Somalia and South Sudan no 2000 value). Live re-read of the IMF DataMapper API matched the vault.

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