Keeping the ‘R’ Where It Belongs in BRIC | Opinion | The Moscow Times:
09 December 2009
By Martin Gilman, former senior representative of the International Monetary Fund in Russia, is a professor at the Higher School of Economics."
Whether we find it a useful characterization or not, we seem to be stuck with the acronym of BRIC ever since Goldman Sachs first mooted that sequence of letters in 2001. The key idea was that the economic potential of Brazil, Russia, India and China was such that they could become four of the most dominant economies by 2050. Although the very idea seemed incongruous at the time, the name stuck.
Each of the four countries has demonstrated that they, along with other emerging market economies, could indeed come to challenge the pre-eminence of the advanced countries by midcentury, if not before. Although the BRICs were unable to decouple from the fallout of the international crisis, they have shown resilience. Even Russia, the worst affected this year, appears to be poised for a strong recovery in 2010, while the advanced economies will still be languishing.
Trying to compare countries in terms of rankings is a mug’s game. Arguments and data can always be aligned to confirm a predetermined view. History is rife with examples of this. Unfortunately, there has been an onslaught of articles explaining why Russia should not be included in BRIC — the most recent examples by economists Nouriel Roubini and Anders Åslund — or that Brazil is the up and coming star of the BRICs with Russia being the outlier. For example, a recent issue of The Economist observed, “Sometime in the decade after 2014 — rather sooner than Goldman Sachs envisaged — Brazil is likely to become the world’s fifth-largest economy,” behind only the United States, China, Japan and India. Russia was pointedly not even mentioned. more
