India and China will continue to drive global expansion as they
are more "nimble" and can produce at lower cost, Indian Finance
Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said.
"China and India have much to look forward to," Chidambaram told
the India Economic Summit organized by the World Economic Forum in
New Delhi yesterday. "Developing countries have acquired greater
capacity to compete with developed countries."
The two Asian economies, the world's fastest growing, adapt
better to changes in global market conditions as they have cheap
labor and can more quickly seize opportunities, Chidambaram said.
That doesn't mean economic power has moved to China and India, the
Harvard-trained minister said, according to Bloomberg News.
"As long as advanced countries have the edge in knowledge,
financial and material resources, I don't think power has shifted
to developing countries," Chidambaram said. "What has changed is
that developing countries have acquired greater capacity to compete
with developed countries."
India's US$906-billion economy grew 8.9 percent last quarter
from a year earlier, while China's US$2.6-trillion economy expanded
11.5 percent. That kind of pace is more than three times the rate
of growth in the United States and countries sharing the euro.
Still, the World Bank estimates more than half India's 1.1 billion
people live on less than US$2 a day.
(Shanghai Daily December 3, 2007)
