India just became a trillion-dollar economy. And with that it moved into the elite club of 12 economic powerhouses that enjoy this distinction. This is not expected to be a statistical blip, even though India crossed the trillion-dollar threshold as a result of the US dollar slipping below Rs 41. India's gross domestic product (GDP) at market prices is officially estimated to be just over Rs 41,00,000 crore for 2006-07 and that, on current exchange rates, translates into a little more than $1 trillion.

Countries like the US, Japan, Germany, China, the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Canada, Brazil and Russia have all breached the trillion-dollar GDP level in the past.

As with the GDP, so too with India's stock market: by tweaking the numbers and definitions a bit, it's easy to get the milestone $1 trillion achievement. For instance, the Bombay Stock Exchange, with a capitalisation of $944 billion, is also inching toward the magic $1 trillion mark.

Considering that, as recently as in 2000-01, India's GDP was under $500 billion, this means it has more than doubled in the last six years. Successive years of 8-9 per cent growth have obviously helped, but ironically so has the fact that inflation has been relatively high, which means the growth in nominal GDP is much more than in real terms.

The recent strengthening of the rupee against the dollar has provided the final push to take the economy beyond the trillion-dollar mark. So, is it just a temporary statistical blip? Perhaps not.

Even if the economy grows by as little as 5 per cent in the current year and inflation stays at around 5 per cent, the country's GDP for 2007-08 would be of the order of Rs 45,00,000 crore. So, even if the exchange rate were to move back to around Rs 45 to a dollar, India would still end the year with the status of a trillion-dollar economy.

In purchasing power parity (PPP) terms - which converts rupees to dollars on the basis of what the two currencies can actually buy in their respective economies rather than on what the nominal exchange rate is - India has been for some time the fourth-largest economy in the world behind the US, China and Japan and its size is closer to $4 trillion.

In fact, given the much faster pace at which India is growing compared with Japan, it should be the third-largest economy in PPP terms by the end of this year. It isn't just at home, however, that India is counting in trillions these days.

In another trillion-dollar story released in the report, the accumulated wealth of the 20-million-strong non-resident Indians (NRI) community has been estimated to be more than $1 trillion, more than the Indian economy of about $850 billion.

These are the findings of a High-Powered Expert Committee appointed by the federal government to find ways to make Mumbai an international financial hub.

Overseas Indians are estimated to hold financial wealth, apart from real estate, gold and art, of more than $500 billion, while total wealth is pegged at more than $1 trillion. International remittances to India are the highest in the world, worth $25 billion a year and growing at 25 per cent annually. It is one of the fastest-growing markets in the world, with the Persian Gulf region one of the major contributors.