Sberbank, it would seem, may be of the mindset that that all great ideas begin with a great acronym.  A new report released by Russia’s largest lender today has suggested that Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan, or BURK,  could be a new economic force to be reckoned with (a sort of eastern antidote to the EU’s debt-laden PIGS or a young lodestar within the BRIC’s vast spread?)  The choice of acronym will provide the British media with ample opportunities for derisive headlines; some analysts contend however that the notion of this grouping is far from preposterous.  AFP introduces the concept: 

Sberbank coined the peculiar acronym for Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan to put the four heavyweight ex-Soviet economies into a group rivalling the BRIC union of Brazil, Russia, India and China.

The state-run institution admits that BURK’s combined markets account for little more than three percent of the world’s gross domestic product and that its transparency record is not great.

But it argues that the vast region shares similar problems and could follow the same prescriptions to achieve growth similar to what Asia and Latin America have been witnessing for much of the past decade.

And to that end, the 170-year-old bank issued a novel report entitled “The BURK Countries. 2010 Results and 2011 Prospects.”