| Kippreport.com

Re-shuffling alliances for the new (economic) world order

April 17, 2011 1:35 by Arab News

It was essentially a loose alliance to forge a common emerging-market negotiating stance on issues from climate change to world trade and to act as a counterweight to the West.

While Western economies have weakened, emerging economies like China and India have grown at breakneck pace while Brazil, Turkey and Argentina and others haven’t done badly either.

So a new economic world order should acknowledge these emerging players to reflect new global political and economic realities. As O’Neill, has forcefully argued, entities such as BRICS and the new world order should include players such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Indonesia, Mexico and South Korea.

The first step toward making the global financial system more democratic and less vulnerable is to cut its dangerous dependence on the increasingly undependable US dollar. This is why the Sanya Declaration calling for a more broad-based international currency system “providing stability and certainty” deserves to be backed by everyone.

As the current economic system is no longer truly representative, BRICS have urged the IMF to expand its use of Special Drawing Rights, used as currency to transfer funds between member governments, paving the way for a more stable alternative to the green back. The five nations have decided to trade among themselves in their own currencies—a big step forward, of course. Let’s hope this leads to more effective strides toward making our world a more stable place to live.

The article was originally published in Arab News.

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Tags: BRIC, BRICS, China, Economy, Europe, recession, US