Beyond the BRICS

There’s a new “it” economic bloc in town: Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey, collectively known as MIST.

Investors now look up to the MIST countries as new havens for investment after markets in the BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — have gone slow these days.

Awash with cash, MIST governments invest their money in health. They spent about 6.5 percent of their gross domestic product in the sector, more than what the BRICS collectively spent at 5 percent in 2010.

The median health spending per capita is $640 in 2010 — higher than the BRIC’s $525. The group however doesn’t rely too much on official development assistance to invest in their health sector.

The level of health aid has in fact gone down these past years, and, collectively, health aid to MIST went down by 7 percent from 2010 to 2011.

By being aid recipients and becoming aid provides, MIST contries are revolutionizing the development world and, some argue, even changing the rules of the game.

These emerging donors conduct their development work through South-South cooperation.

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