With India and China among the top five economies, developing countries now produce 41 per cent of the world’s output, up from 36 per cent in 2000, according to the World Development Indicators (WDI) 2008.

Measured at gross national income, the United States is still the largest economy, producing $13.2 trillion worth of goods and services; but China is number two, and India is number four, a senior world bank official said Friday.

“So we have two developing countries in the top five, and we have three more in the top 12,” noted Eric Swanson, programme manager, World Bank Development Data Group, taking it as a pointer to growth of the developing world and its movement into the global economy.

The aid landscape too is changing rapidly as developing countries such as China and India are becoming donors even as traditional donors remain the dominant source of development aid, the WDI report noted.

The combined output of the world’s economies reached $59 trillion in 2006. Strong growth over the period has increased the shares of all developing regions except Latin America and the Caribbean, while the share of high-income economies fell by five percent.

This year’s World Development Indicators (WDI) introduces new estimates of purchasing power parity (PPP) allow more accurate comparisons of market size, the structure of economies, and what money can buy…...