Exxon Bigger than Pakistan: Survey

TWENTY-NINE of the world's 100 leading economic entities are companies, with the largest - oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp - bigger than the economy of Pakistan, a United Nations survey showed on Monday.

Pakistan is a country of more than 141 million people, although just over half of those are of working age. Exxon Mobil employed 95,000 staff worldwide.

The UN Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad) ranked Exxon Mobil 45th on the list with value added of US$63 billion, ahead of Pakistan's gross domestic product (GDP) of US$62 billion.

Countries are ranked according to GDP while the corporations are ranked based on 'value added' - the sum of pre-tax profits, salaries, amortisation and depreciation for 2000.

The survey found that General Motors is bigger than New Zealand while Nigeria is slotted between DaimlerChrysler and General Electric.

The figures show that relative importance of the top 100 companies is on the rise, with their value-added activities accounting for 4.3 per cent of world GDP in 2000, compared with 3.5 per cent in 1990.

'In general, the top companies are growing at a faster rate than countries,' Unctad spokesman Miguel Perez-Ludena said. He said the aim of the survey was to enter into the global debate about whether such corporations were bigger than countries. It had used the value-added mechanism to provide a more accurate calculation because most other surveys measure corporate size in terms of sales or foreign assets.

The top 44 spots in the survey were all occupied by countries. The US tops the list with a GDP of US$9.8 trillion, more than double that of second-placed Japan. Singapore is ranked 41, followed by Malaysia. Other corporations in the list include auto-makers Ford, Toyota and Volkswagen, pharmaceutical manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline and retailer Wal-Mart. - Reuters, AP