Minister: Brazil's economy will overtake France

Minister Guido Mantega said that while the International Monetary Fund forecasts Brazil will become the fifth-largest economy by 2015, he thinks it will happen earlier.

He didn't forecast exactly when that would be, however.

Mantega's remarks came just one day after the London-based consulting group Center for Economics and Business Research reported that Brazil had surpassed Britain this year as the world's sixth-largest economy.

Mantega was quoted by the website of the O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper Tuesday as saying that Brazil's gross domestic product is growing twice as fast as the GDPs of European countries, "so it is inexorable that in the future we will overcome France and, who knows, even Germany if its economy does not perform well."

Brazil's GDP is expected to grow 3 percent in 2011 and 3.5 percent in 2012, according to the nation's central bank. Between 2003 and 2010, Brazil's economy saw average growth of 4 percent.

Mantega said Brazil's growth is due to strong job creation and a stable inflation rate.

"Brazil's economy will continue growing more than the GDPs of European countries, which will remain in slow motion," Mantega said Monday in a statement released on the ministry's website.

He cautioned, however, that the Brazilian government should not rest on its laurels, noting that even though its economy may become more powerful than those of European nations, "it will take 20 to 30 years before Brazilians enjoy a European standard of living."

Investing in social programs and continuing to target the eradication of poverty must remain among the Brazilian government's top goals, Mantega said. To do that, the nation's economy must continue growing at a rapid clip, so that a wide array of those programs can maintain funding.

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