Watch out for the Brics … and for the Next 11

[CHIMO]

Jim O'Neill of Goldman Sachs claims credit for thinking up the mnemonic Brics, which is now universally used as shorthand for the four fast-growing economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Speaking at an Institute for Economic Affairs conference in London on Thursday, he said that in the UK we simply don't get the transformation being wrought to the global economy not just by the four big Brics but by 11 smaller briquettes following in their wake.

O'Neill's point is a good one. There has been so much navel-gazing going on in the west since the start of the financial crisis three and a half years ago that there has been a tendency to underestimate the shift in the economic balance of power that is now under way.

Here are some of the relevant facts. The Brics and the so-called Next 11 (Korea, Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iran, the Philippines and Vietnam) have a combined population of 4.5 billion, almost 75% of the global total. They are growing much more rapidly than the advanced countries of North America and Europe, with O'Neill predicting that the new Growth 8 (the Brics plus Korea, Indonesia, Turkey and Mexico) will grow four to five times as quickly as the United States between now and the end of the decade. China alone will account for half this growth.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/feb/18/brics-next-11-economy-transformation-uk