The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China will meet this Tuesday in Yekaterinburg, Russia for the first official BRIC summit. The emerging markets are looking for greater global clout. During the gathering, the BRIC leaders are set to discuss the economic downturn, possible reforms for international financial institutions and long-term options for a new reserve currency.
Brazil and Russia are seen as the strongest proponents of the formal meetings. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said, “The good news is that rich countries are in crisis and that emerging countries are making a huge contribution to save the economy and, consequently, save the rich countries.” A spokesperson for President Dmitri Medvedev told reporters that “Russia believes this format to be rather promising economically as well as politically.”
Jim O’Neill, the chief economist of Goldman Sachs and man who coined the BRIC acronym, believes that China will likely pass the United States as the world’s largest economy and the BRICs will top the Group of Seven (G7) rich countries in less than 20 years. In an interview with Reuters, Mr O’Neill said, “We now conceive of China challenging the US for the number one slot by 2027 and…the combined GDP of the four BRICs being potentially bigger than that of the G7 within the next 20 years. This is around 10 years earlier than when we first looked at the issue.”
“I think BRIC as an institution is a very useful threat and inter-temporal political grouping to force more realistic change of global institutions,” O’Neill said. By translating growing economic power into a stronger voice, the BRICs could have a major influence over the reforms of international institutions and an emerging new world order. But it remains to be seen if the summit will be the first in a series of regular talks and it’s still unclear if the BRICs can create a strong political grouping.
Photos from Agence France-Presse/Getty Images, James Hill for The New York Times, AFP and Goh Chai Hin.
