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The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.

May - 2006 - issue > Last Word

The World, BRICs Dream and India

Jim O'Neill
Wednesday, May 3, 2006
Jim O'Neill
In 2001 we called for the world to 'Build Better Global Economic BRICs.' In doing so, we prompted what has become a global debate about the opportunities presented by Brazil, Russia, India and China. In the intervening five years the BRICs have emerged as central players in the world economy and global policymaking, affecting trade, capital markets, energy policy and investment decisions.

When we first wrote in 2001, we stressed these four countries' importance to the global economy. We calculated that their share of world GDP share was set to increase significantly over the next decade. This growing importance led us to argue that the time had come for a radical reform of international economic policymaking. Post-war economic institutions-most notably the G7 structure-had become outdated. Writing in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we argued that the inclusion of the BRICs in formal policymaking was key to greater international economic and political cooperation.

Specifically, we called for reform of the G7 into a new G9 that would scale back Europe's role and incorporate Brazil, Russia, India and China.

We followed this paper two years later with Dreaming With BRICs: The Path to 2050. This ground-breaking work projected long-term growth rates and suggested that the BRICs as a whole would be bigger-in Dollar terms-than the G6 (the U.S., Japan, Germany, the U.K., France and Italy combined) by 2041. It was part of this research where we first truly appreciated the long term potential of India. Until this point we had assumed China had the greatest potential. Within the BRICs story, India has the best long term growth potential not least due to its fantastic labor force dynamics.

India's Place in the BRICs Dream
Within the BRICs Dream, India has the greatest growth potential of the four. We estimate that if India pursues the correct policies, then it can grow on average by more than 5.5 percent per annum over the next 45 years. We estimate that by 2050, India's GDP could be around $25 trillion, 50 times bigger than today. By 2032, India will overtake Japan to become the world's 3rd largest economy. It will have overtaken each of the major continental European economies sometime during the previous decade.

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