The number of Hong Kong's US dollar millionaires is predicted to increase from 51,000 to 83,000 by 2011, according to Datamonitor's Wealth Management in Hong Kong 2007 report, an annual compound rate of 8.8 percent. And the amount of assets held by Hong Kong High Net Worth Individuals will grow from $150 billion to almost $250 billion over the same period, an annual increase of almost 11 per cent. There were 51,000 Hong Kong HNWIs in 2006, representing an increase of 31,000 since 2002 and an annual growth rate of 12.8 per cent. Datamonitor predicts Hong Kong’s wealth market will grow faster than Singapore’s, with Singapore millionaire numbers expected to rise by 7.3 per cent annually over the next 4 years. “It is Hong Kong’s open economy that has seen its financial services industry thrive,” said David Lalich, analyst and author at Datamonitor Financial Services. "The nation is heavily dependent on its services industry, which accounts for almost 90 per cent of its GDP." The figures are more conservative than those in Merrill Lynch and Capgemini's second annual Asia-Pacific Wealth Report, published last month, which found 87,000 High Net Worth Individuals in Hong Kong at the end of 2006, up 12.2 per cent from a year earlier. Merrill Lynch and Capgemini found that Hong Kong HNWs had an average net worth of $5.4 million, followed by China’s HNWs with $5 million and Singapore with $4.9 million.