Money World economy
"One of the legacies of this crisis may be a recognition of changed economic power relations," World Bank president Robert Zoellick said Friday in Istanbul ahead of annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
"Recent forecasts show that China and India are helping to pull the global economy out of recession.... A multipolar economy less reliant on the US consumer will be a more stable world economy," he added.
Consumer spending accounts for around two-thirds of economic activity in the United States -- by far the world's biggest economy -- and experts say lower spending could have radical effects on the US's world standing.
The IMF on Thursday forecast emerging and developing economies would grow 5.1 percent in 2010 -- in contrast with just 1.3 percent in advanced economies.
China's economy was projected to grow by 9.0 percent next year and India's by 6.4 percent -- far ahead of 1.5 percent expansion in the US economy.
"The American engine is not as strong as it was before," IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in a speech in which he called for emerging markets to be given more say in the IMF's decisions.
"Emerging economies are becoming more and more the real partners," he said.
