Brazil Inches Further with Economic Growth, Surpasses UK
Declining Euro economies have catapulted Brazil past the United Kingdom this year, placing number six on the strength of the former's rising trade partnerships with growing Asian economies, mostly led by China, Japan and India.
UK's slide and Brazil's ascension mark the turbulence continuously unfolding in Europe while much of Asia Pacific deliver growth to economic regions that would shortly dominate the world's new economic map, according to the latest global economic assessment issued recently by the Centre for Economics and business Research (CEBR).
The shifting of places, the CEBR said, would continue on over the next decade and by 2020, Britain's economy would retreat two notches more and settle at number eight while both France and Germany are also projected to crash out of the top five of world's biggest economies.
From its current spot at number four, Germany is projected to be pushed down at seventh place while France's number five post will be lost and Paris will find itself sitting on number seven by 2020, the new CEBR report said.
The CEBR report also revealed that despite slowdowns and other economic issues, the United States, China and Japan are deemed to maintain their dominance of the global economies, with frenetic expansion on Asian economies projected by economists to further Brazil, now regarded as South America's leading economy.
"Brazil has beaten the European countries at soccer for a long time, but beating them at economics is a new phenomenon," CEBR chief executive Douglas McWilliams was reported by the UK-based The Guardian as saying in describing the incredible rise of Brazil.
"Our world economic league table shows how the economic map is changing, with Asian countries and commodity-producing economies climbing up the league while we in Europe fall back," McWilliams added.
The CEBR report also predicted that international growth will shrink by 2.5 percent next year, possibly setting the stage for Europe's further deterioration in the years ahead, with economists blaming the region's economic managers for mishandling its financial and credit affairs.
Europe, the CEBR said, will have to face the daunting consequences of overspending and credit binge that characterised many of its economies for the past 20 years, stifling any little chances that a turnaround will arrive soon.
It will be a 'lost decade' for much of the European Union, economists said, which largely encapsulates China's recent view of the economic bloc that The Guardia said was described by one official as "a worn-out welfare society."
The worst that could happen, according to the CEBR, is the abandonment of the Euro currency, which has become more eminent with growth in the region stalling further, a spectre that economists said could pull down gains by most global economies.