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It’s time for BRIC, graduates!
The time for emerging economies has arrived. Graduate students looking for job opportunities abroad should look at the new BRIC destinations: Brazil, Russia, India and China.
It’s time we focus on emerging economies, otherwise known as BRIC (Brazil, Russia India, China). When investment bank Goldman Sachs came up with its 2003 paper stating that BRIC would rapidly develop to eclipse the current richest countries of the world by 2050, economists took notice of this global thesis by Jim O’Neill. Today, the world is taking notice, including international investors, and so are potential graduates. According to Sachs, the economic potential of BRIC is such that they may become the four most dominant economies and be the fastest growing Emerging Markets.
An increasing number of graduates are also opting for BRIC countries for potential job opportunities says Ritwik Roy, Vice President of Emerging Markets Fixed Income, HSBC, London, and a graduate from the London School of Economics. Ritwik, who has been in the investment banking sector since 2001 attributes this trend to the “pull effect of booming home markets…the quality of life is improving to match the west…and purchasing power is also increasing.” He adds that “in terms of potential and salaries, the BRIC nations are extremely attractive.”
“The brightest and the best students who come to the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and other European countries for relevant graduate studies are now eager to return and make most of the economic boom,”
Ritwik further iterates that unlike the graduates from the BRIC nations in the late 90s who would stay on in western countries as a first choice, the situation has drastically altered. “The brightest and the best students who come to the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and other European countries for relevant graduate studies are now eager to return and make most of the economic boom,” he claims.
And not only students from the BRIC nations, but also western students are increasingly looking at countries like India for the immense opportunities they offer. Federica Cocco, an Italian student who has completed her graduate studies from City University, London this year wants to work for the Indian media. She says, “The western economies are stagnated and as a graduate who is starting her career, a blooming economy is the place to be in. One can grow with the emerging economies.”
Indeed, the world economy is rapidly changing and the emerging markets might just be the driving forces in a few years’ time. The BRIC countries are attempting to create an “alliance” to convert their ‘growing economic power into greater geopolitical clout’ and the most recent activity related to it was the BRIC Summit held this year at Yekateruburg in Russia headed by the foreign ministers of all BRIC countries.
Goldman Sachs predicts that China and India will be the global suppliers of manufactured goods and services, whereas Brazil and Russia will dominate the raw materials industries. So much so, that these countries, combined together, have the potential to ‘form an economic bloc to the exclusion of the modern-day G8 status.’ And in order to pave their ways to becoming the world powers, these countries have also stressed on education, foreign investment, domestic consumption and domestic entrepreneurship.
The BRIC study in 2004 further claimed that people with an annual income over US$3,000 would double within the following three years reaching 800 million people within a decade. It was calculated that by 2025, over 200 million people in the BRIC nations will be earning over US$15,000.
Ritwik emphasizes, “A graduate in a city like Mumbai working for a western bank having specialised skills in equity sales, IT or investing has the potential of doubling his or her salary every two years. To the contrary, in the current scenario, this would never happen in London or New York!”
Moreover, the BRIC nations hold immense possibilities for graduates as the US has reacted heavily to the economic slowdown by shutting its doors to foreign talent. “H1B visas for foreign workers are very tough to obtain,” according to Ritwik. In Western Europe as well, the situation is similar.
