Who You Calling a BRIC?

Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) -- I spent last week in Indonesia,working on a series for BBC Radio about four of the world’s mostpopulous non-BRIC emerging economies. The BRIC countries --Brazil, Russia, India and China -- are already closely watched.The group I’m studying for this project -- let’s call them theMINT economies -- deserve no less attention. Mexico, Indonesia,Nigeria and Turkey all have very favorable demographics for atleast the next 20 years, and their economic prospects areinteresting.

Policy makers and thinkers in the MINT countries have oftenasked me why I left them out of that first classification.Indonesians made the point with particular force. Over the yearsI’ve become accustomed to being told that the BRIC countriesshould have been the BRIICs all along, or maybe even the BIICs.Wasn’t Indonesia’s economic potential more compelling thanRussia’s? Despite the size of its relatively young population (atremendous asset), I thought it unlikely that Indonesia would doenough on the economic-policy front to quickly realize thatpotential.