Too Soon to Remove B From BRIC, Says Acronym Coiner O’Neill

Timber is stacked in piles at a sawmill in Anapu, Brazil, on Dec. 18, 2014.

Photographer: Dado Galdieri/Bloomberg
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Brazil still deserves a place among the BRIC group of emerging economies even as growth has slowed for several years, according to Jim O’Neill, the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chief economist who coined the acronym.

“Three years, which is how long Brazil has disappointed, is not really the basis for making such a conclusion,” he said when asked whether it’s time to remove Brazil from the group also made up of Russia, India and China. “If Brazil and Russia carry on in the same way, of course they won’t warrant being regarded as a BRIC” toward the end of the decade, he said.