Bric nations to seek ways to flex political muscle
May 16, 2008
By Patrick Donahue
Berlin - First came the booming economies. Then came the rush of investors. Now the so-called Bric nations - Brazil, Russia, India and China - are talking about forming a political alliance.
The four largest emerging economies are sending their foreign ministers to Yekaterinburg, Russia, to meet today for the first time outside the venue of the UN. On the agenda are such non-economic issues as weapons proliferation, counter-terrorism, energy and climate change.
The term Bric was coined by Jim O'Neill, the London-based chief global economist at Goldman Sachs Group, in 2001.
Last year the combined gross domestic product (GDP) of the four nations made up 12 percent of global GDP, up from 8 percent in 2000, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In the past two years stocks in the Bric nations have risen 70 percent, versus the 42 percent increase of emerging markets overall.
"It's really a group that first existed as a concept in the minds of analysts and subsequently came to exist as a practice between the countries," Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim said in a Bloomberg Television interview last week. "The meeting is recognition of the fact that we are four big economies with a large influence in the world."
French President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to add at least China, India and Brazil - as well as Mexico and South Africa - to the Group of Eight (G8) leading industrialised countries rather than inviting them as guests to summits. Russia is already a G8 member.
China, the most populous country, is expected to pass Germany as the third-largest economy this year, the IMF says. India is the world's largest democracy. With 10 consecutive years of economic growth, Russia is the world's biggest energy exporter, while Brazil is the largest food producer after the US.
As a whole, the Bric economies might surpass those of the G7 countries - the G8 minus Russia - by 2035, O'Neill said in a Goldman report last November. In an interview on Monday, he said that including the Bric countries in the G8 would be "a recognition of the modern reality".
The Bric ministers met at the UN general assembly in 2006 and 2007. Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi is holding talks with Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov and Pranab Mukherjee of India before the arrival of Brazil's Amorim.
Win Thin, an analyst at New York-based bank Brown Brothers Harriman & Co, wrote in an e-mail on Monday: "Besides the economic front, the Bric group could prove to be a growing counterweight to US hegemony in global affairs."
Russia wants Bric to become a "notable factor in multilateral diplomacy".
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