LONDON: The British nation is worth pounds sterling 4,983,000,000,000 (pounds 4,983 billion), according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS), which has just released figures totting up the nation’s assets.

“This is the first time we have been able to say what UK plc is worth,” said a spokesman for the ONS. “It’s the first year we have sat down and added everything up to come up with a magic figure.”

More than half that amount — pounds 2.7 trillion, to be precise — is accounted for by the value of people’s homes. But the total also includes personal, commercial and public assets such as vehicles and machinery; and financial assets such as shares and the money in bank accounts. Even intangible assets, such as the value of patents, are included.

Commercial and public property accounted for a further pounds 565 billion, making it the country’s second most valuable asset, while parts of the national infrastructure, such as roads, bridges and pipelines, were valued at pounds 537 billion.

If the assets could be divided evenly among the British population, each person would be worth almost pounds 85,000.

“We found pounds 5 trillion was the current market value of the UK, including the value of the land,” said Ian Hill, one of the ONS statisticians who compiled the figures. “That’s risen a lot over the last few years because property prices have shot up.”

In 1994, when residential property was worth only around pounds. 2 trillion, the country’s net worth was pounds 2.8 trillion. People’s homes accounted for 43 per cent of the nation’s capital, compared with 55 per cent last year.

“Information like this has been produced since the 1950s but we now have a much more robust system which enables us to publish in a lot more detail,” added Mr Hill.

Much of the demand for greater detail came from economists, who use the data to make predictions.

“By law, companies are obliged to have balance sheets. In the same way, if we want to know the wealth of the nation, we need a national balance sheet, and that’s what these figures really are,” said Martin Weale, director of the independent National Institute of Economic and Social Research.

“It’s nice to have figures that bring this all together because more frequent indices tell us what changes there are, but not how land and housing (values) relate to factories and roads and things like that.

“Once you have got a balance sheet you can think of a number of questions you might want to ask; for example, is the country saving enough.”

Mr Weale warned that the UK’s rising “pricetag” was not necessarily a sign that Britons were better off.

“Sharp increases in house prices crowd out productive investment. The country as a whole cannot become better off by pushing up house prices, whereas it can by building roads and factories and things like that,” he said.

“We should be cautious. It’s nice for the people who own their homes, but not those who haven’t bought them yet — including those who have not been born. In a sense it’s paying for the present by robbing the future.”

The statistics also show that the government is deeply in the red, with a net worth of minus pounds 124 billion when the national debt and other obligations have been deducted from its assets.

The statistics also challenge the assumption that investment in industry has declined in recent years. While it was below the rate of depreciation in some sectors, such as mining and agriculture, it was above it overall. The value of manufacturing has remained steady over the last four years, at around pounds 200 billion.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.