Jim O’Neill, famous as the inventor of the idea of the BRICs, has moved on to MINTs – Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey. He has a series on BBC Radio 4 starting today on these countries.
We’ve become very familiar with the idea of the rising economic powers, and enmeshed in debate about whether their growth rates can be sustained, and where the next growth stories are – hence the interest in MINTs, and the recent ‘Africa rising’ theme in so much comment. So it’s easy to forget the dramatic impact of Jim O’Neill’s original report over a decade ago, capturing the idea of a shift in economic power in the memorable acronym. What is still overlooked – and this is one of the themes of his new book, [amazon_link id=”1907994130″ target=”_blank” ]The BRIC Road To Growth[/amazon_link] – is that this shift has already happened. Many of us commenting from the West still talk about it as something that is going to happen. But as Danny Quah of the LSE has mapped very carefully (and he is writing about the Great Shift East in his own forthcoming book), the world centre of economic gravity is in Asia *now* – here is his map.
This makes the other theme of Jim O’Neill’s book all the more relevant. He argues passionately that the structures of global economic governance need to change. A world economy whose governing institutions reflect patterns of growth and trade that no longer exist is going to be a disordered world economy. It’s an important message, and my impression is that nobody is doing anything about it.
[amazon_image id=”1907994130″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]The BRIC Road to Growth (Perspectives)[/amazon_image]