BRIC is an acronym for ‘Brazil, Russia, India, and China.’ Economists once saw the four countries as the giant economies of the future. They are all large countries geographically which also have large populations. During the first years of this century, the BRIC countries’ economies were growing rapidly.
Unfortunately, this all ended when the global financial crisis hit in 2007/8. Since then, Brazil and Russia’s economies have shrunk. Even the economies of China and India have been expanding more slowly since the financial crisis than before.
In 2003, Goldman Sachs issued a report which made a prediction for 2050. The report forecast that the four BRIC economies would be wealthier than most of the current major economic powers. In fact, everybody pointed to BRIC as the nations that would soon become advanced economies.
BRIC countries account for over 40% of the world’s population. Economists once predicted their combined GDP would be massive by 2050. In fact, they thought BRIC’s combined GDP would exceed those of the US and EU combined.