By Joe Parkinson<\/p>\n
A few months back, economists were openly debating whether fast-growing Turkey should be elevated into the elite club of \u2018BRIC\u2019 economies \u2014 Brazil, Russia, India and China \u2014 that are slated to dominate global growth over the next decades.<\/p>\n
Aside from the fact that it would have made the acronym less catchy (think BRICT or TRIBC) investor concerns over Turkey\u2019s rapidly widening current account deficit and Middle East turmoil conspired to put that debate on ice. But Turkey is considered a key player in the second-tier of emerging economic powerhouses: referred to by the lesser known, and, alas, more forgettable acronym CIVETS.<\/p>\n
Turkey, Columbia, Indonesia, Vietnam, South Africa and Egypt \u2014 all large, but not continental size economies with young populations \u2014 have been attracting waves of foreign investment. These economies are expanding robustly, are not overly reliant on natural resources and \u2014 with the exception of Egypt \u2014 possess relative political stability.<\/p>\n
Conscious of the potential of these economies and undeterred by the clunky acronym, Standard & Poor\u2019s on Tuesday launched the CIVETS 60 index \u2014 comprised of 10 stocks from each economy. Unsurprisingly, Turkey\u2019s top 10 is dominated by the country\u2019s banking giants \u2014 tightly regulated firms that have won plaudits for weathering the financial crisis in rude health. Also present are the country\u2019s two biggest holding companies \u2014 Sabanci and Koc \u2014 and Turkcell, the dominant telecom firm.<\/p>\n
Standard & Poor\u2019s Michael Orzano, associate director of global equity indices, says the index has been created to reflect CIVETS economies becoming \u201cincreasingly important\u201d to international investors.<\/p>\n
Turkish stocks make up 21% of the weighted index, slightly trailing South Africa and Indonesia but a significantly higher percentage than Columbia, Vietnam and Egypt. Turkey-watchers say the index is likely to become an important tool to track Turkey\u2019s performance relative to congruent economies in other regions. Economists note that Turkey\u2019s neighborhood \u2014 plagued by euro-zone debt woes and Middle East political crises \u2014 could make it tougher to maintain rapid growth than other CIVETS, with the exception of Egypt.<\/p>\n
But if Turkey does manage to maintain robust growth and preserve financial stability, it may not be long before the discussion of whether Turkey deserves a promotion to the \u2018BRIC\u2019 premier league is back on the agenda.<\/p>\n
via Turkey at Heart of New \u2018Not-Quite-BRIC\u2019 Index – Emerging Europe Real Time – WSJ.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Joe Parkinson A few months back, economists were openly debating whether fast-growing Turkey should be elevated into the elite club of \u2018BRIC\u2019 economies \u2014 Brazil, Russia, India and China \u2014 that are slated to dominate global growth over the next decades. Aside from the fact that it would have made the acronym less catchy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":66059,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[846],"tags":[4235,5421],"class_list":["post-33134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-bric","tag-civets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}