Mineral information and statistics for the BRIC countries 1999-2008

The term ‘BRIC’, used to refer to the four countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China (Figure 1), has become almost synonymous with the rise of emerging economies in the global market. It originated with Mr Jim O’Neil, Chief Economist of Goldman Sachs, in 2001 when he was looking to convey the increasing importance of globalisation and to express the belief that the non-western world would become increasingly important to the global economy compared to the ‘established order’ dominated by the USA, Europe and Japan. At the time he predicted that the economies of the BRIC countries would overtake the six largest western economies by 2041. This prediction has since been revised, first to 2039 and then to 2032. Although many critics still consider it to be no more than ‘marketing hype’, the ‘BRIC’ tag has subsequently been widely used in relation to the rapid growth of emerging economies.