A new black money estimate calculated by senior economists of the Bank of Italy has pegged Indian's undeclared assets parked overseas in tax havens to be between $4 billion (nearly Rs 27,000 crore) and $181 billion (nearly Rs 12.05 lakh crore) according to two different calculating methods used by them.

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This is from the $6-7 trillion of the total black money which has been stashed away in the world, a report by a leading daily has said.

However, this new estimate only considers money parked in shares, bank deposits or debt securities. It doesn't money stowed away in real estate, art or gold, overseas. 

This black money is held in tax havens using shell companies to hide the original company's credentials, the report says. 

According to the report, the economists used data from the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) to calculate the figure. 

The economists -- Pellegrini, Sanelli, Tosti -- however, said that this figure cannot be taken as "firm data" and should be "considered with great care".

Talking about India's share in the total black money pool, the economists shared two ways to calculate it:

-- Pegging India's black money pool to be the same as its contribution to the global GDP. At 2.5% in 2013, India's share in the total black money comes to about $152-181 billion.

-- The second method considers that India has stowed away as much amount in hidden assets as it has declared as investments. Calculating using this method, India's black money estimate comes to about $4-5 billion (nearly Rs 33,000 crore).

The economists quoted by the report, however, maintain that this is only a ballpark figure which hints at what lies buried.