"We can't wait for a return to growth in high-income countries"
- World Bank president Jim Yong Kim
The U.K. economy is likely to lose its place among the world's top 10 largest economies, report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers showed on Thursday. Britain will be overtaken by Mexico and Indonesia during the next four decades, so nation's GDP will be pushed to 11th place in world rankings. A report also projected a rapid rise of the so-called E7 of emerging economies, as well as the fact that such countries like the US, Japan, Germany, France and Italy will also lose their ratings. However, the U.K. is expected to retain a prime spot on measures of GDP per head of population by 2050. In the meantime, China may overtake the U.S. as the world's largest economy already by 2017, two years earlier than previously was estimated.
"We can't wait for a return to growth in high-income countries," said World Bank president Jim Yong Kim. "So we have to continue to support developing countries in making investments in infrastructure, in health, in education."
"I suspect what (the figures) confirm is that trade will act as a drag on the Q4 (GDP) numbers," said Peter Dixon, economist at Commerzbank. "Uncertainty around the euro zone debt crisis has not only hampered UK exports, but there is also some evidence that UK firms have turned down business in parts of the euro zone due to credit risk."
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