The other factor is foreign reserves. Since 2005 foreign reserves in emerging markets have been growing faster and are greater than those in the developed countries. And if you look at China, who you all know where almost had three, well, probably past $3 trillion now. Japan used to be the biggest. It's $1 trillion. Saudi Arabia, Russia over $400 billion, Taiwan over $300 billion, Korea, Brazil, India, Hong Kong over $200 billion and growing, incredible foreign reserves in these countries.
Let's look at the debt. You've been hearing about the debt problems in Europe and the US. How about emerging markets? If you look at the debt-to- GDP ratio for emerging markets you see it's going down, while the debt-to- GDP ratio for the developed countries is going up. So there's a bit divergence here in these two areas.
And individual, if you look at individual debt, excuse me, if you look at individual debt-to-GDP ratios for both personal and private debt you'll see the developed countries are at the top, those blue and gold bars, and the emerging countries are the red and purple, big, big difference. And of course if countries have high foreign reserves and no debt-to-GDP levels the bond investors and other investors start to pay attention because they figure they're going to probably get their money back for those countries that have high foreign reserves and low debt-to-GDP levels.
Let's look at valuations. A lot of people have witnessed the increase in emerging market stock prices, but if you look at the valuations we of course are not as cheap as we were at the beginning of '09, but we're not as high as we were at the high points in the history since 1988.
And you can see here the price earnings ratios have reached for emerging markets now about ten times, which is very, very much lower than it was back in 1988 when it was twenty-eight times, and a little higher than it was at the low point in 2008, similar story for the price-to-book value. We're more or less in the middle of the range, similar story for yield as well. So generally speaking we are not as easy as it was when we were at the beginning of '09, but we're still finding lots of opportunities out there, particularly with the continuing IPO activity, which is increasing supply.
Now many people ask how about investment themes? Where are you investing? And we don't invest in themes. We invest in companies. However, if you look at the companies in which we are invested you'll see that two themes seem to predominate.
First is consumers. We believe in consumers in emerging markets. Why? Because there are more of them. You can see the population growth in emerging markets compared to the developed countries going up in a fast pace. And right now we're looking at 5.6 billion consumers in emerging markets versus 1.2 billion in developed countries. If we look at China, India alone it's over a billion each, compared to the US and EU below 400 million each.
However, of course per capital income is lower. US, UK, France, Germany are all over $30,000 a year, Russia and countries like that below $11,000 per year in per capita income. However, that situation is changing very, very rapidly. Per capita income is growing at a rapid pace.
And it only stands to reason because population is growing, but at a very slow pace. Let's say, let's be very, very conservative and say population is growing at one percent. If your growth rate is eight percent, or seven percent or even five percent, per capita income is booming. So between 2005 and 2010 per capita income in emerging markets went up by 87 percent, compared to 13 percent in the developed markets.
And if you look at imports by these countries you'll see the picture. Back in 1991 China took less than two percent of the world's imports. Now they're taking over nine percent of the world's imports. Oh by the way that's direct imports. That doesn't include all the Gucci bags and Louis Vuitton bags being bought in Paris by Chinese and all the shopping there then they're bringing it all home, lots of consumer goods as well as commodities.
And the same thing is true of India. You see India taking a bigger and bigger share of the world imports. And the reason why we see potential is we just look at rural China. And by the way the same story could be said of rural India, rural Cambodia, rural South Africa or wherever you want to go with the world. The goods and services in these rural areas is very, very low.
Back in 1990 there was one refrigerator for every 100 households in China, rural China. Now there's over 30. Washing machines went from nine to 49. Now it's probably 50 or 55. Computers they've hardly the surface. They've got a long, long way to go.
Bicycles are down. Back in 1990 there was over one for 100 households - over 100 for 100 households, over 100, 118 to be exact. Now it's 98. Why? Because they're buying motorcycles and automobiles. And you see the sales of Chinese cars across the past that of the US. And the same thing is true in India. Domestic automobile sales are going through the roof, and in Indonesia motorcycle sales going through the roof.
So it's a great, great market to be in when you see that kind of growth. And if you're in the beer business beer consumption is going up in China and all these other countries, spirits, Maotai, whiskey, brandy, so forth. I was explaining to our European audiences when I was speaking there last month I said, "Maotai is the drink that they give to foreign diplomats before negotiations begin." Wine [they keep all], well know that the wine consumption is going up pretty fast. Of course Internet is growing at a very past pace in these countries.
The other theme is commodities. I know there's a lot of doubters who say, Oh God, oil prices coming down and so forth and so on. Sure, there's going to be a lot of fluctuation, but the trend is definitely up. If you look at the Commodity Research Bureau index you can see, yes, it overshoots that red trend line, but the trend is definitely up for all commodities, copper way up.
By the way you see if you - you have to appreciate the difficulty of getting this stuff out of the ground. You heard it was last year they had these miners in Chile who were trapped in the mine deep underground.
I remember earlier this year we went to Kazakhstan to a mine in the middle of the country. It took us two hours to fly to this place. I was with my two young analysts who had never been into a mine. And we were given a briefing by the safety engineer. Of course we had all the gear, and oxygen or [nesnic]. And I asked the safety engineer, "Have you had any accidents this year?" He said, "Yes, only 11." And these two analysts looked [iddy]. And I said, "Any guess the question is [fee]"
This is mining. This is the difficulty of getting this stuff out of the ground. So the cost is not going to go down, believe me.
Platinum, we need platinum hand plated for every automobile for the catalytic converters. Nickel, stainless steel, corn, now all these top commodities are moving up, sugar, soy beans. Soy beans were first cultivated in China. Now they have to import.
Gold, and recently I'm sure you've read about diamond prices now are moving up versus store value. Interesting to know that of course there's a relationship between the dollar index going down and gold prices going up. And if you look at per capita income in China and the relationship between that and gold it's very, very clear. And the same thing is true of India, per capital income going up, gold prices going up.
