MINTs Are The New BRICs? The Perspective of Urban Consumers

With economic performance declining in some of BRIC countries, economists have been increasingly looking for new growth angles. One of such is MINT countries, which share favourable demographics, beneficial geographical locations and interesting economic prospects. Cities are often seen as the most evolved consumer markets of both BRICs and MINTs as their development has been closely related to urbanisation. Compared to their BRIC counterparts, MINT cities generally feature smaller market sizes and more necessity-oriented consumer spending as of 2014. However, the situation might change in the future as the key MINT cities are largely anticipated to outperform the BRIC megacities in terms of population and economic growth over 2014-2030, which will bring rising purchasing abilities to their inhabitants. For example, in 2030 Istanbul is forecast to be second only to Shanghai in terms of total consumer expenditure, while Jakarta is anticipated to exceed the consumer expenditure of today’s Moscow.