Brazil has become the sixth-biggest economy in the world, the country's finance minister has said. The U.S., China, Japan, Germany and France occupy the top five places. The Latin American nation's economy grew 2.7% last year, official figures show, more than the UK's 0.8% growth.
“If the global crisis hadn’t worsened in the second quarter, our growth [for 2011] would have been closer to 4 per cent,” said Guido Mantega, finance minister.
Brazil's rise has been relatively swift, taking seventh place from Italy in 2010. The United States, China, Japan and Germany are the four biggest national economies. But with Europe struggling to contain a raging debt crisis, some economists say Russia and India could overtake Germany and France in the next ten years.
The banking crash of 2008 and the subsequent recession has relegated the UK to seventh place in 2011, behind South America's largest economy, which has boomed on the back of exports to China and the far east.
The largest country in Latin America, its economy has surged because of vast reserves of natural resources and a rapidly growing, and cash-rich, middle class. Brazil's Finance Minister Guido Mantega says Brazil hopes to become the fifth largest economy by 2015, surpassing France.
The Brazilian slowdown comes amid growing evidence of decelerating growth across the developing world. In China, where GDP growth slipped to 8.9 per cent from 10.3 per cent in 2010, Wen Jiabao, the premier, on Monday set a 2012 target of 7.5 per cent.
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