Brazil beats Britain in economic battle

Dubai: Brazilians aren't just better footballers than the British — they're also better businessmen.

According to the latest economic data from the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), Brazil's sizzling economy has knocked the United Kingdom out of sixth place.

The annual league table published by the CERB shows the British economy dropped one place to seventh. It is projected to fall to eighth by 2020.

"I think it's part of the big economic change, where not only are we seeing a shift from the west to the east, but we're also seeing that countries that produce vital commodities — food and energy and things like that — are doing very well and they're gradually climbing up the economic league table," CEBR chief executive Douglas McWilliams told the BBC yesterday.

A report based on International Monetary Fund data published earlier this year also said the Brazilian economy would overtake the UK in 2011. Brazil has a population of about 200 million, more than three times the population of the UK. Brazil's economy grew by 7.5 per cent last year, but the government has cut its growth forecast for 2011 to 3.5 per cent after the economy ground to a halt in the third quarter, with analysts blaming the country's high interest rates and the worsening situation in the Eurozone.

The CEBR also said that Russia moved up one spot in its league table to ninth in 2011, and predicted that it would rise to fourth spot by 2020. The CEBR data also predicted that India, the world's 10th biggest economy in 2011, would become the fifth largest by 2020.

And it said European countries would drop down the table, with Germany falling from fourth in 2011 to seventh in 2020, the UK from seventh to eighth, and France from fifth to ninth.