Text II – items 38 to 40
The world’s major economies are Ø
and 2004 looks likely to be the best growth year for the United
States since the tech bubble Ù . There are signs
that Japan and Germany may finally be turning the corner after
years of Ú .Yet doubt still hangs over the big
economies like a cloud, producing an increasingly joyless recovery.
As global chieftains gather this week at the World Economic Forum
in Davos to mull over the theme of prosperity and security, they are
finding that prosperity is returning most brightly outside the major
markets, in places like China, Southeast Asia and even parts of Latin
America and Africa. There is still p lenty of talk of bubbles and
overheat ing in some emerging markets, but not all markets are
created equal, and a pack of bulls believes a new golden age is falling
on these countries as a whole. “This is turning out to be the best
period for emerging markets since 1993,” says Ruchir Sharma,
co-head of global emerging markets at Morgan Stanley.
The economic forecasters back up the bulls. Southeast Asia
is predicted to grow faster than 6 percent, Russia and Poland more
than 5 percent, Africa better than 4 percent, and even beleaguered
Latin America is expected to rise above 3 percent. According to
Global Insight’s research, the growth rebound will be most dramatic
in current or former pariah economies: Venezuela will snap back
from a 10 percent recession in 2003 to top 5 percent this year,
and growth in war-torn Iraq will jump from negative 21.2 percent
to a positive 39.7 percent.
Newsweek, January 26th , 2004 (with adaptations).