Mexico City, Oct 28 (IANS/EFE): Mexico currently ranks with Brazil and Russia in terms of gross domestic product per capita but it is projected to fall well behind those nations and other BRICS members in the coming years, according to a study published by the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, or IMCO.

IMCO's assistant general director, Manuel Molano, said that while the BRICS bloc of emerging market economies, which also includes India, China and South Africa, currently accounts for 18 percent of global GDP, Mexico's share of the total has remained stagnant at roughly 1.6 percent since the 1970s.

Mexico's economy has grown by an average of just 2 percent over the past 10 years, well below the performance of China (12 percent), India (9 percent), Russia (7 percent) and Brazil and South Africa (4 percent each), Molano said Wednesday during the presentation of the private think tank's International Competitiveness Index, or ICI.

Mexico currently "resembles the wealthiest BRICS" because of its GDP per capita of $8,930, which is less than that of Russia ($9,910) and Brazil ($9,390) but greater than that of South Africa ($6,090), China ($4,260) and India ($1,340), the IMCO expert said.

But IMCO's forecasts show that China and South Africa will quickly surpass Mexico by 2018, when both countries will have attained a GDP per capita of roughly $25,000. India also is projected to move past Mexico in that indicator by approximately 2042.

The ICI, which ranks the competitiveness of 46 nations, puts Mexico at the No. 32 slot, unchanged from the previous four years and down from its highest-ever ranking of 30 in 2005.

South Africa is the only BRICS nation that ranked ahead of Mexico on this year's list; Switzerland and Sweden occupy the first two places while Guatemala (45) and Venezuela (46) bring up the rear.

Mexico places higher than the nations of that bloc in terms of creating a favourable environment for doing business and only trails China in terms of the least dependence on raw-material exports.

Mexico also ranks alongside Russia in terms of exports per capita with $2,625 and $2,884, respectively, surpassing South Africa ($1,751), China ($1,183), Brazil ($992) and India ($190) by a wide margin.

The country compared favorably to the BRICS countries in terms of high-technology exports as a percentage of total exports. Though trailing China (32 percent), Mexico (19 percent) outperformed Brazil (12 percent), India (6 percent) and Russia and South Africa (5 percent each) in that indicator, Molina said.

Mexico outdistanced the BRICS nations as far as the average productivity of its non-oil economy, the IMCO study said, citing data from the World Bank, World Trade Organization and other international organizations.

But the study also showed that Mexico is falling behind the BRICS countries in the average years of schooling of its population, while the number of patents per 1 million Mexican inhabitants was close to zero.