The changing face of the global economy

2011 has been a rather critical year as far as the dynamics of the global economy is concerned. In particular, the eurozone struggles has been the key highlight of the year with questions raised over the sustainability of key economies such as Italy and France. In fact, the survival of the bloc itself had become a mooted topic only a few months back. At the same time, the rising clout of emerging economies also gained prominence to the extent that in October this year the possibility of BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) economies helping expand the funds of the IMF to help assuage the eurozone crisis, was being discussed Latest rankings by Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR)-a London-based research group-are indicative of this shifting economic patterns of the global economy. According to the rankings, the Brazilian economy has overtaken the UK as the sixth largest economy in the world, also outpacing peers Russia and India, which bagged the ninth and tenth spot, respectively. Even more interesting are the research groups predicted rankings for 2020, which show BRIC economies rising further up leaving behind European countries in the rankings. In fact, France is predicted to move down considerably from the fifth place in 2011 to ninth place by 2020 with the CEBR predicting that UK will overtake France by 2016. But the slump of the eurozone is quite obvious when the changing rankings of 2011 versus 2020 are compared. The BBC quoted the CEBR as saying: "The eurozone economy would shrink 0.6 percent in 2012 if the euro problem is solved or 2 percent if it is not." It is hinting that economic growth for the bloc is not imminent for the coming year. CEBR Chief Executive Douglas McWilliams claimed that the change in rankings is a part of a "big economic change", whereby emerging economies are gaining prominence and "countries that produce vital commodities-food and energy and things like that-are doing very well and they e gradually climbing up the economic league table". With the economic strength of the emerging economies gaining prominence, it is inevitable that their influence on the world economy and key institutions such as the IMF and World Bank will increase considerably. The long-term effect of it remains to be seen.\

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CEBR World Economic League Table
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Rank         2011           2020
                      (forecast)
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1              US             US
2           China          China
3           Japan          Japan
4         Germany         Russia
5          France          India
6          Brazil         Brazil
7              UK        Germany
8           Italy             UK
9          Russia         France
10          India          Italy
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Source: BBC