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Análise do artigo: “The New Shopping Superpower – The BRICs rely increasingly on domestic demand and can boom even if export markets like the U.S. slow” de Jim O’Neil, economista chefe da Goldman Sachs.

A crise atual tem colocado em xeque muitas das expectativas macro-economicas construidas ao longo da última década. Dentre tais expectativas uma das mais proeminentes certamente é a de fortalecimento contínuo e acelerado da economia dos países emergentes diante dos países em desenvolvimento, em especial no famoso grupo dos BRIC (Brasil, Rússia, índia e China).

A expressão BRIC foi cunhada no estudo “Dreaming With BRICs: The Path to 2050” publicado pela Goldman Sachs em outubro de 2003, no qual realizou-se uma série de análises de tendência acerca das perspectivas econômicas dos quatro maiores países emergentes do globo. Fatores como crescimento esperado do PIB, renda per capita e política monetária foram analisados e chegou-se a conclusão de que este grupo de países se tornaria a maior força econômica mundial por volta do ano de 2050.

Com o advento recente da crise e seus efeitos dramáticos em diversas economias dos países emergentes,  muitos questionaram se ainda eram sustentáveis as previsões realizadas pelos analistas da Goldman Sachs em relação aos BRICs.

O texto abaixo publicado na penúltima edição da revista americana Newsweek nos traz uma luz sobre o tema e apresenta uma visão bastante otimista. Vale destacar que o autor do artigo é Jim O’Neil, o próprio economista chefe do Goldman Sachs, o que torna o texto ainda mais relevante. Boa leitura:

“China’s February trade surplus plunges, industrial production falls to record lows, electricity consumption slows dramatically, millions flee Shenzhen and other cities in the east as factories close. These are just a few recent news items that have prompted client e-mails requesting my latest forecasts for the BRICs, the term we at Goldman Sachs coined back in 2001 to encapsulate the excitement about Brazil, Russia, India and China, the world’s most promising emerging markets. What everyone wants to know is whether this is the end for what we called the BRIC “dream.”

The simple answer is no. While I predicted a few years back that the BRIC economies would together be larger in dollar terms than the G7 by 2035, I now believe that this shift could happen much faster—by 2027. Take the gloomy prognostications for China, the biggest and most important of the BRICs. What the China doomsayers don’t report is that through February retail sales growth rose by 15 percent. Consumer prices have fallen sharply, providing a big boost in real income. The government is stimulating demand through infrastructure spending, and Beijing has announced major plans to strengthen medical coverage, something that could eventually release a tremendous amount of pent-up Chinese savings. The Chinese A-share market, which fell more than 60 percent in 2008, hit bottom on Nov. 10. It’s no coincidence that this was the day Beijing announced a stimulus package of 4 trillion yuan. Since then, Chinese stocks have rallied by more than 30 percent, outperforming U.S. stocks by close to 50 percent.

Who said decoupling was dead? The decoupling idea is that, because the BRICs rely increasingly on domestic demand, they can continue to boom even if their most important export market, the United States, slows dramatically. The idea came into disrepute last fall, when the U.S. market collapse started to spread to the BRICs, but there’s now lots of evidence that decoupling is alive and well.

This year the BRICs as a whole will grow only about 4 percent. But compare that with the truly bleak forecasts for the rest of the world. Our latest global GDP forecast for 2009 shows a decline of 1.1 percent. We forecast a decline for the U.S. of 3.2 percent; an even worse fall-off for the euro area, negative 3.6 percent; and for Japan, an astonishing decline of 6.1 percent. The good news is that things will get better. In 2010, we expect world growth to be near 3 percent, with China, stimulated by growing domestic demand, back at 9 percent, and India at 6.6 percent.

Within this overall picture, there is clear evidence of a major rebalancing, as BRIC shoppers account for an increasingly large share of global consumption. When we track retail shoppers from 2004 to 2008 (using data adjusted for inflation and the relative size of national economies), it becomes clear that European and Japanese shoppers were barely contributing anything to real consumption growth. American shoppers gradually contributed less up to 2007 before completely zipping up their wallets in 2008. BRIC shoppers slowly contributed more, and, importantly, their contribution continued to increase into 2008, despite the collapse of the U.S. shopper.

At the heart of this shift in consumer power is China. Its total economy already equals that of the other three BRICs put together, and what happens to China is critical for the BRICs, and the world. With the authorities announcing plans to introduce medical insurance to 90 percent of the rural community by 2011, a huge infrastructure-spending program and a massive easing of monetary and financial conditions, the only debate in my mind is exactly when China will restore its growth rate back above 8 percent. When that happens, I suspect I’ll be getting far fewer worried e-mails asking what our new BRIC projections look like!”

Autor: Jim O’Neil, economista chefe da Goldman Sachs, comentarios por Otávio Calixto (texto em versão parcial, publicado pela Newsweek em 21 de março de 2009).

Fonte: http://www.newsweek.com/id/190384

Copyright: Newsweek