By Pedro Nicolaci da Costa
NEW YORK, Feb 4 (Reuters) - China's frugal ways and deep pockets should keep it well ahead of other large developing nations as they tackle a global financial crisis, Standard & Poor's said on Wednesday.
Indeed, the ratings agency argues that so-called BRIC countries -- Brazil, Russia, India and China -- should not really be grouped together at all because their outlooks are increasingly divergent.
"China is probably best positioned to find solutions, in particular fiscal stimulus, to withstand an externally driven crisis," said S&P analyst Frank Gill.
He cited a strong budget, a more closed financial system and low debt levels as underpinning China's strength, but warned that these resources must be deployed wisely.
"Without sufficient and protracted stimulus, we think China's economy could potentially suffer a severe shock, which could inflame social pressures with political repercussions."
China announced a nearly $600 billion dollar stimulus package late last year, but some analysts worry the money will not be deployed quickly enough to stem a rapid fall in exports to countries at the center of the crisis, like the United States and Europe.
In contrast to China's solid grounding, Russia is at a much higher risk of infection from the global financial malaise. Like Brazil, it stands to lose rather than gain from the sharp pullback in commodity prices that yanked the price on a barrel of oil down near $40 from peaks above $150 last year.
"Since the beginning of the decade, we see the investment boom in these two middle-income countries as closely correlated with commodity price developments, and hence has been interrupted by recent commodity price declines," S&P said.
Russia is also being hurt by a sharp retreat in its currency to record lows against its dollar/euro basket, despite the central bank's efforts to sustain the rouble.
India's case is somewhere in between. It has experienced much higher growth rates than Brazil, but its public finances are also shaky, S&P said.
In the end, the four countries' outlooks and internal composition appear so disparate, that it leaves the folks at S&P wondering "whether the BRIC countries ever shared much in common other than scale and high portfolio inflows." (Reporting by Pedro Nicolaci da Costa; Editing by Andrea Ricci)