The growing importance of emerging markets and the BRIC

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The BRIC is the acronym that defines the emerging countries Brasil, Russia, India and China.
Daniel Thornley, Senior Vice President at the Economist, works at the Economist Intelligence Unit and he is an expert on emerging markets.
I was at one of his presentation and it was very interesting.

Some of the slides on China are below:

Daniel is also the author of the book Emerging Markets: Lessons for Business Success and the Outlook for Different Markets

Sound-bites for cocktail parties and Board presentations:

  • China is the key growth economy in the world (25% of world growth in 2007)
  • Over the last five years China has accounted for 20% of global growth
  • China is the world’s fourth largest economy and will become the third largest in 2008 surpassing Germany
  • It is the magnet for foreign direct investment ($96bn in 2007)
  • Second largest market in world for Coca-Cola
  • Now a bigger market than the US for mobile phones
  • China has the second largest currency reserves in the world at $1.7 trillion
  • Reserves rising from one trillion dollars in 2006 to two trillion in 2009!
  • China accounts for 25% of the US trade deficit, but only runs a modest surplus with Europe
  • Some 60% of its exports are generated by companies with FDI
  • It is the world’s largest exporter in 2008 with 1.5 trillion dollars in exports (in 2005 fourth largest exporter)
  • Imports have been rising at 40% per annum
  • Last year, it consumed 25% of the world’s steel and zinc, 40% of cement and one third of the growth in global oil consumption
  • China overtook Japan in 2005 as the world’s second largest importer of oil after the US
  • Retail is booming and China is adding each year the retail market capacity of Argentina!
  • Wal-Mart imported $25 billion of cheap products from China in 2007, helping keep down US inflation
  • One for the future: in 2009 the Chinese language Internet will be larger than its English-language counterpart
  • The move of peasants to the cities in the last ten years is the greatest migration in human history

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