For the past two years almost any edition of the Economist or Financial Times has been awash with talk of BRICs, a select set of developing economic powers who have raced ahead in recent years while European and North America have lagged.
If Spanish bank BBVA gets their way the new decade could herald an era of EAGLEs instead. They have coined the term to acknowledge the impressive growth of a wider range of developing economies than the restrictively snappy BRICs acronym (Brazil, Russia, India and China) allows. They point out that both Indonesia and Korea, despite not beginning with the letter R, are set to contribute more to global growth over the next decade than Russia.
A BBVA paper explains “this group will include any country which will contribute more to global GDP growth than the average of the largest developed economies during the next ten years.” The good news for Colombia is that BBVA have identified them as possible candidates for their new EAGLE grouping of developing powers, a fact that was proudly reported in the national financial press on Friday.
BBVA reports that Colombia would need to sustain 6.3% annual growth over the next decade to join the club, 1.6% more than is currently forecast. The Spanish bank’s chief economist in Latin America Joaquin Vial told newspaper La República that “if Colombia can manage to grow sustainably and keep itself open to foreign investment, the size of its population would allow it to join this group.”
EAGLEs stands for “Emerging and Growth-Leading Economies” and the ten original members are China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Korea, Russia, Mexico, Egypt, Turkey and Taiwan. BBVA plans to update the list annually.