BRASILIA: BRICs membership of Brazil and Russia has faced danger and membership may expire by the end of this decade if they fail to revive their sagging economies, according to Jim O’Neill, the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chief economist here the other day.
Asked if he would still group Brazil, Russia, India and China together as emerging market powerhouses as he did in 2001, O’Neill said here the other day that “I might be tempted to call it just ’IC’ or if the next three years are the same as the last for Brazil and Russia I might in 2019!!”
The BRIC grouping will be dragged down by a 1.8 percent contraction in Russia and less than 1 percent expansion in Brazil, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Customs Today. China is seen growing 7 percent and India 5.5 percent.
The BRICs were still booming as recently as 2007 with Russia expanding 8.5 percent and Brazil in excess of 6 percent that year. The bull market in commodities that helped propel growth in those nations has since ended, while Russia has been battered by sanctions linked to the crisis in Ukraine and Brazil has grappled with an unprecedented corruption scandal involving its state-owned oil company.
“It is tough for the BRIC countries to all repeat their remarkable growth rates” of the first decade of this century, “There was a lot of very powerful and fortuitous forces taking place, some of which have now gone,” said O’Neill here the other day.
