Tuesday, September 14, 2010

When we speak of the rise of the developing world, the discussion is China, China, China, and only recently India. Both nations are taking over the global spotlight as they have the strongest growth of any large economy in this recession. Yet with all this talk, people ignore the rise of South America's two largest countries: Argentina and Brazil.
Argentina, although not nearly as populated as Brazil, is a growing economy that has recovered well from its worst financial collapse only 8 years ago. The economy has expanded during this time, and although inflation is up, Argentines are not in a state of panic because they are still a semi-developed nation in terms of per-capita income. They currently have one of the largest per capita incomes in South America if not the largest. They have strong agricultural capabilities and have a larger consumption of meat per capita than even the US does. It also wouldn't be inaccurate to say that Argentina still has a working age population that isn't aging very drastically and it is a G-20 member. It is also incredibly resource rich and that can serve to help them very soon as Western Nations will need to turn to other sources (or as China finds them first)

Brazil has been growing at least 5% per annum since President Lula's first term. They have a large stock of raw materials that is drawing interest from industrial nations all across the world. They also have a relatively young working population with the ability to work for a long time to come. It also helps that they have nearly 200 million people to work in the labor force.

So perhaps we should focus our attention to include Latin America? I mean, China is going to be the next super power and India will follow shortly after. But Brazil is also a BRIC nation and Argentina is successfully rebuilding its financial sector.