China, India
China growing at 7 percent will add about $1 trillion nominally to global output every year, O’Neill said. When measured by purchasing power parity, China’s growth adds twice as much as the U.S.’s, he said. India expanding at 6 percent will add twice as much as the U.K. in those terms, he said.
“Their consumption is increasingly key for global consumption and which markets were amongst the world’s strongest in 2014? China and India both were up significantly,” he said. “So many investors are herd like, they probably have already forgotten the BRIC’s but it is silly. They are the most important influence in the world.”
A prediction in his book, “The Growth Map,” that the BRICs economies would overtake the U.S. in size this year will be delayed likely until 2017 primarily by the drag from Russia, O’Neill said.
The founding of the BRIC’s Development Bank signals the group’s influence in global economic affairs will rise, O’Neill said.
By 2035, the BRICs will be as big as the Group of Seven nations while China is in “a reasonable position” to be bigger than the U.S. in 2027 and India may overtake France to become the world’s fifth biggest economy by 2017, “certainly before 2020,” he said.