FUTURE
LANDSCAPE
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The global economic pecking order is set for dramatic change over the next three
decades, declares Chris Lewis.
Many, many more years ago than I care to remember, in the
late 1980s, I wrote an article for the in-house magazine
of the then major airfreight forwarder, MSAS, about how
the world economic order would change by the early years of the
twenty-fi rst century.
My recollection is very incomplete – even the name of the
publication escapes me – but I do recall that the article envisaged
a world in which countries like the US had slipped well down the
global economic pecking order, with China, Brazil, Mexico and
the other Asian nations in the ascendency.
Needless to say, things didn’t quite work out like that: the
predictions were only partially correct. While China’s economic
growth continues relentlessly, and it is indeed now challenging
the US as global economic top dog, and with India hard on its
heels, the US has not quite been toppled off its perch. At the
same time, recession and other problems have taken the shine off
the performance of many of the hopefuls of the late 1980s/early
1990s, such as Mexico and Brazil.
(Needless to say, MSAS is no longer with us, at least as a global
entity, having been taken over by the UK’s Exel logistics which
in turn became part of the Deutsche Post-DHL global empire,
although its name does live on in some national markets).
US to slip?
Such are the diffi culties of long-range forecasting, but that hasn’t
deterred economists. A couple of years ago, the respected fi rm
PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) published The World in 2050,
which hazards a guess as to what things will look like in three
decades from now.
PwC Chief Economist John Hawksworth predicts that, by
then, China will indeed have become the largest economy “by
a signifi cant margin, while India could have edged past the US
into second place.”
No real surprises there, but
Indonesia could have risen
to fourth place. The country
is currently more noted for
its natural disasters but, with
its teeming population, it is
already the world’s eighthbiggest
economy. In longrange
economic forecasting, it
is important to look beyond
current problems and see
countries’ true potential over
many years and decades.
Brazil, Russia and Mexico
will occupy the next three
places, in that order, with
Japan, Germany and the UK
clinging on to their top ten
spots.
PwC’s fi ndings are
broadly replicated by other
commentators. Standard
Chartered Bank, for instance,
also predicted in its January
2019 report that China and
India will overtake the US as
the world’s largest economies
as early as 2030, although
unlike PwC, it suggests that the
UK will fall out of the top ten
entirely.
The bank calculates that,
by 2030, the size of China’s
UK growth
has the potential
to outpace the
average rate
John Hawksworth, Chief Economist,
PriceWaterhouseCoopers
30 February 2020 www.airlogisticsinternational.com
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