From Business Spectator:
"Australia is at the hub of a regional powerhouse that, according to the IMF, will be comparable in size to the economies of the US and Europe within five years.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says that based on expected trends, Asia's economy - including Australia and New Zealand - will be about 50 per cent larger by then, accounting for more than a third of world output.
But it doesn't stop there.
In its Finance & Development Magazine for June, released in Washington on Tuesday, the IMF says that in 20 years' time, Asian gross domestic product (GDP) will exceed that of the Group of Seven (G7) major industrial economies - US, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Italy.
"The possibility that Asia could become the world's largest economic region by 2030 is not idle speculation," IMF's director of Asia and Pacific Development Annop Singh says in his article Asia - Leading the Way.
"It seems very plausible, based on what Asia has already achieved in (two) decades."
