New power centres from BRICS- UNDP
March 15, 2013, 12:20 pm

The report says the pace of growth among developing nations like China is “unprecedented in human history” [Getty Images]

By 2020, the report projects the combined economic output of the three leading developing countries – Brazil, China and India – will surpass the aggregate production of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The report singled out Brazil, India and China as the nations that have become leaders on the global stage.

“China has already overtaken Japan as the world’s second biggest economy….India is reshaping its future with new entrepreneurial creativity,” the report said, adding that Brazil has lifted its living standards and created anti-poverty programmes that have been emulated across the world,” said Bill Orme, spokesman for the UNDP’s Human Development Report.

“These are new power centres with new sources of technology and ideas,” Orne was quoted by news agency RIA Novosti.

Developing nations, which have lagged behind the rest of the world for decades, are now “driving global economic growth and societal change for the first time in centuries,” and “transforming the global power balance,” said the report.

“Never in history have the living conditions and prospects of so many people changed so dramatically and so fast,” the UN’s 2013 Human Development Report said.

The report described the pace of growth among developing nations as, “unprecedented in human history, with hundreds of millions of people being lifted out of poverty…and billions more poised to join a new global middle class.”

“…the proportion of people living in extreme income poverty worldwide plunged from 43 percent in 1990 to 22 percent in 2008, including more than 500 million people lifted from poverty in China alone,” the report stated.

And as this shift occurs and developing countries emerge as peers to their already developed counterparts, the changes are projected to produce impacts that will be felt globally.

“If you compare what’s going on now with the Industrial Revolution, what happened then were big historic developments of productivity in Europe and North America which transformed the world,” Orme said.

The key difference now, experts said, is the pace of the progress.

“During the Industrial Revolution, it took 30 to 40 years for development in the United States to occur,” Orme said.

“The computer age and access to technology has been the single biggest drive of change the world has ever seen,” added Orme.

Ria Novosti