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Thursday, August 21, 2003

The updated CIA World Factbook 

Anytime I want quick reference on any country (that I don't have to pay for), it is the CIA World Factbook that I turn to. I just noticed that the Factbook has updated itself and for most countries, the information was updated last in August, 2003. I checked out India, China and the U.S. just to get a quick sense of what has been updated.

Interesting to note the economic numbers, even if its in PPP terms. The U.S. economy (at $10.4 trillion) is twice the size of the Chinese economy ($5.7 trillion) which itself is more than twice as large as the Indian economy ($2.6 trillion). Of course, in real dollar terms, the U.S. economy would remain as is, China would drop to just above $1 trillion, while India would be around half that. Same is the case with per-capita incomes.

Strangely enough, the numbers that havent been updated are the telecoms numbers -- which are probably the easiest numbers to acquire. China's mobile market is at 65 million while India's is just above 2 million while the true numbers as of today are 200 million plus and 16 million plus respectively.