http://www.piribo.com/publications/country/latin_america/brazil/esp201.html

The four BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) have a combined population of 2.7 billion, roughly equal to half the world total. Continuing strong economic growth, especially in China and India, means that these economies are becoming very large, and may overtake the world’s developed economies in terms of absolute size over the next 20 years.

Wealth levels remain very low, however; GDP per capita in Brazil and Russia is barely 10% of that in the G6 (USA, Japan, Germany, France, UK and Italy). China and India are poorer than this. All the BRIC countries contain areas which are wealthier than the average, such as China’s eastern coastal cities. But no BRIC country has developed the per capita wealth necessary to create a modern comprehensive healthcare system as found in the G6.

The BRIC countries have large numbers of hospitals and beds, but the level of provision per thousand population is generally far lower than in developed countries. Levels of medical staff are generally low, and quality is often an issue.

While the BRIC markets can therefore legitimately be called large markets, they cannot be called rich. Per capita spending on healthcare and on pharmaceuticals is a very long way below that in the G6. This gap is likely to remain for the foreseeable future.

One shared characteristic of the BRIC countries is an historically poor level of intellectual property protection. India introduced product patent legislation for the first time in January 2005, although it is far too soon to see how this will work out in practice. The other markets continue to fall below TRIPS requirements, with regard to enforcement if not national rules themselves. Brazil, India and China are all WTO members, although Russia is not.

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You know you are a desi when ........ You spew forth the virtues of India, but don't want to live there...............You've never had a tanning salon membership

IT growth seen slumping
Wednesday June 20 2007 15:04 IST
IANS

"NEW DELHI: India’s IT party may just be over, soon! After expanding by 35 per cent in the past two years, the annual growth of India's IT and BPO industries may fall to 30 per cent for the next four years, a study has revealed."

http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEH20070620044318&Page=H&Title=Top+Stories&Topic=0&

There is one significant factor that these articles are missing i.e. the requirement for ever expanding consumer markets.
The growth of the Capitalist world economy requires strong consumer demand for all kinds of goods and services.

The only way the world economy can grow and progress is by continously finding and expanding consumer markets.

That's where countries like BRIC and the erstwhile East European Bloc countries are important.

The consumer markets in the Western hemisphere cannot expand at the rate necessary to ensure sustained economic growth.

The other factor is the exploitation of natural resources.
Western countries are already on the tether end of how much they can exploit their natural resources - they have precious little left.
The environmental movement is much stronger in the G8 countries than in the developing countries.

Without an assured and protected mechanism for exploiting natural resources, the world economy cannot progress.
It sounds harsh, but that's the way it is.

The above two factors (i.e. expanding markets and availability of exploitable natural resources) will ensure that at some point in the future countries like BRIC will become major economic powers, the same way that the G8 countries were through the 19th and 20th centuries.

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"Mah deah, there is much more money to be made in the destruction of civilization than in building it up."

-- Rhett Butler in "Gone with the Wind"