Economic rotation settling around Asia for Investment

It won’t be new when I say since long and still to a greater extent; development is understood to be the economic development or the economic supremacy. Why? Why did this happen? One very simple answer to it would be- the economy is measurable. Development is a relative term and carries different meanings for different individuals. The parameters of development have a wide domain: infrastructure, economy, social setup, behavioral and cultural aspects, etc. and of these, economy stands to be easily and widely accepted measurable unit for the calculation of development.

United States of America remained on the top in the list of economic supremacy almost from the end of 19^th century. America’s economy influenced almost everything and every policy on the globe. Economy is a rotational process and time changes. Between these periods, the rise and fall of many economies in the world occurred: Germany during World Wars, Soviet Union during Cold War, Japan during World War II but the land of the rising sun gradually emerged in the technological innovations. American economy also influenced the two major collapses in the world history: Berlin wall and the Soviet Union. Asia, though rich with resources, usually remained left out due to its dependence on Europe mainly for aid, trade and politics.

Coming to this period of time, Asia is lightening up and Africa has been slowly following it. Bloomberg recently carried out a study to identify top 20 emerging markets in the world which can provide better chances for the return and the results came fantastic for Asia. China tops the chart and besides China, there are seven other countries from Asia. Namibia, Zambia, South Africa and Morocco represent Africa in the countdown. The parameters that were taken under consideration for the study were IMF forecasts for 2013 to 2017 for GDP growth, inflation, government debt and total investment. In total, there are only eight countries from Europe, North America and South America which signify that these continents have almost approached their saturation points and now, it’s the turn of Asia and Africa, which have been ignored from the global development platform and constitute most of the third world countries.

When we talk about current economic anticipations, many people across the globe opine that Chinese economy is surely going to overtake the American economy before 2020. Interestingly, the economic statistics are very encouraging for the anticipation made. Talking about the same Bloomberg study mentioned above, China, South Korea and Thailand are the top three countries. The inflation-adjusted GDP growth of China from 2013 to 2017 is expected to be around 42.9%, government debt as % of GDP is 14.9 and taking into account the ease of doing business, it ranks 91. And for this achievement, the recently elected government with the changed philosophy has to contribute the most.

Note: This article was published in The Himalayan Times Perspectives