Doomsday for the Dollar?

The dollar may need to make room for the Euro and the Renminbi as the rise of economic strength and influence of emerging markets threaten its dominant position as the world's currency.

By 2025, six major emerging economies-Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, and Russia-will account for more than half of all global growth the World Bank predicts.

The fall-out will drastically change the landscape of the international monetary system, according to the World Bank.

The current predominance of the US dollar would end sometime before 2025 and would be replaced by a monetary system in which the dollar, the euro and the renminbi would each serve as full-fledge international currencies, according to the World Bank report.

If it were to survive, the euro would arise as the most credible rival to the US dollar the report said.

Its status is poised to expand, provided the euro can successfully overcome the sovereign debt crises currently faced by several of its member countries and can avoid the moral hazard problems associated with bail-outs of countries within the European Union, the report said.

On China, the report noted that authorities there had already started internationalising the renminbi by developing an offshore market in the currency and encouraging the use of the renminbi in settling and invoicing international trade transactions.

Over the next decade or so, China's size and the rapid globalization of its corporations and banks will likely mean a more important role for the renminbi, said Mansoor Dailami, lead author of the report and manager of emerging trends at the World Bank.

Emerging economies expected will grow at a rate of 4.7 per cent between now and 2025, a much faster pace than advanced economies which are expected to grow by 2.3 per cent over the same time-frame.

The growth will have other consequences as well .

The balance of global growth and investment will shift to developing or emerging economies, said Mansoor Dailami, the lead author of the report.

Dailami explained this power shift would lead to big boosts in investment flows to the countries driving global growth, with a significant increase in cross-border mergers and acquisitions activity, and a changing corporate landscape in which you're not going to see the dominance of established multinationals.

The fast rise of emerging economies has driven a shift whereby the centers of economic growth are distributed across developed and developing economies - it's a truly multipolar world, said Justin Yifu Lin, the World Bank's chief economist and senior vice president for development economics.