It was in November 2001 that Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill coined the term now used to describe the rapidly emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China, in the research paper “Building Better Global Economic Brics”. He argued that these four economies could make up more than 10 per cent of world gross domestic product by the end of the decade.

In just six years, the investment bank has drastically revised these predictions. Last November, it forecast that China’s economy would surpass the US’s by 2027, India would catch up with the US by 2050 and that the four nations as a group would overtake the G7 in 2032.