Sao Paulo, Dec 28 (IANS/EFE) Brazil's finance minister said Tuesday that his country, which now boasts of being the world's sixth-largest economy, will overtake France for the fifth spot before 2015.

"The International Monetary Fund expects Brazil will be the (world's) fifth economy in 2015, but I believe it will happen earlier," Guido Mantega told journalists in Sao Paulo.

Brazil continues to outpace European countries in economic growth and will "inexorably" surpass France in the near future, the minister said.

"Who knows?," he mused, Brazil may also overtake Germany if that country's economy stumbles.

Brazilian gross domestic product grew by an average of 4.5 percent a year from 2003 through 2010 and is set to return to that level in 2012, Mantega said.

Latin America's largest economy has slowed in 2011, due largely to government efforts to prevent overheating and avert the return of inflation, the bane of Brazilian governments in the 1980s and early '90s.

With inflation under control and healthy job creation, Brazil is equipped to remain in the "vanguard of growth", the finance minister said.

"What is important is that we will be growing more in 2012 than in 2011 and the exchange rate will be better and credit will be cheaper," Mantega said.

Brazil is set to become a leading economic power, the finance minister said Monday in a statement, citing a study from the London-based Center for Economics and Business Research showing the Latin American giant moved ahead of Britain this year to become the globe's sixth-biggest economy.

"The countries that will grow more are the emerging ones, such as Brazil, China, India and Russia," he said, predicting his country will end 2011 with $65 billion in new foreign direct investment.