Brazil beats UK as world’s sixth largest economy

LONDON (ANI): Brazil has overtaken Britain to become the world’s sixth-largest economy, economists have said.

Latest figures from the Centre for Economic and Business Research’s annual world economic league table showed that the UK is now the seventh richest country in the world, and has fallen behind a South American nation for the first time.  The US, China, Japan, Germany and France occupied the top five places and India was placed on the 10th spot in the list, the Daily Mail reports.  According to the report, Brazil’s economy has surged because of vast reserves of natural resources and a rapidly growing, and cash-rich, middle class.

At the same time the UK languishes in the grip of a national debt crisis and lack of bank credit.  

Britons continue to be better off and enjoy a far higher standard of living than the vast majority of people in Brazil but the latter’s 203 million population provides huge economic clout, the paper said.

“The punching power of Brazil as a whole has overtaken Britain because of the huge economic potential of people who live there,” the paper quoted Peter Slowe, a former Government Economic Policy Advisor, as saying.

“Brazil has a variety of natural resources to rely on including gold and silver as well as oil off-shore and minerals in the Amazon. By contrast the UK economy is affected by the problems of the eurozone,” Slowe added.