Indonesia: BRIC should be BRIIC

We have all heard of BRIC, but I think the world is ignoring one giant country-Indonesia. It is the fourth largest country in the world in population, after China, India, and USA. It is bigger than both Brazil and Russia, and I think people are being carried away by the BRIC story. You will hear good things about Indonesia in the years to come.

In US Markets, there are a couple of closed end funds for investing in Indonesia, but I am more into passive investing and indexing-so stay away from them. I do have some TLK in my portfolio-it is the biggest cellular operator in that country. Hopefully we will have good ETFs for Indonesia in the coming months and years.

Have been reading Adam Smith lately-The Wealth of Nations, unabridged, unedited. What a masterpiece. Found more support of my theory that it is the number of humans which ultimately decides how rich a nation becomes (measurable by the stock market size and also GDP).

Notwithstanding the fall in stocks in the last few weeks, especially FXI, the tracker for China stocks, I remain as bullish as ever on China and India. These are the future superpowers of the world-and with the financial situation in China, 1.6 trillion in reserves, we should already call it a superpower. The Chinese should stop pretending that they are a developing country, a poor country. The world needs to come to terms with this fast.

But let's not forget Indonesia. It has the same population size as the USA approximately-and seeems to have been ignored by the BRIC hype. I think we should change that acronym to BRIIC-the two I's for India and Indonesia. Indonesia will be the fourth largest economy in the next few decades.

Sanjay John G.