Thomas Donlan warns readers of his regular Barron’s column that the economies of the so-called BRIC countries offer plenty of reasons for concern.

Members of the G-20, meeting last week in St. Petersburg, Russia, talked too much about Syria and the Middle East and too little about the economic wolf at the door of the BRIC countries. They ignored the wolf despite the notice given by the International Monetary Fund as the meeting began.

The IMF said it expected stronger growth in developed countries and slack in the emerging economies, especially the big BRIC countries.

Brazil is the least well regarded of the four BRIC countries, perhaps because it has been the up-and-coming country of the future for so long and never delivered on its promise.

Don’t wonder why. Its governments, left, right, or military, have followed what seems to be a national impulse to protectionism and redistribution of income. …

… Russia has become an oil sheikdom. The idea of investing in Russian industry was briefly fashionable and the idea of investing in Russian oil-and-gas development lasted a little longer. As late as 2011, analysts and investors were eagerly awaiting a new round of privatization and hoping it would not turn, as the others did, into confiscation. Most of them have come to their senses and recognized that the only way to play the Russian economy is cash-and-carry at the border. …

… After two decades of economic growth fueled by modest relaxation of some economic controls, the Indian economy was ready to outrun the government (and the rupee hit 39 to the dollar in 2008). But the “license raj” (the gigantic bureaucracy) put on the brakes. The central government and the states have refused to allow private investment, especially foreign investment, to take over their role as directors of the economy. They went just far enough to stimulate corruption, and not far enough to stimulate productivity by allowing investors to win and lose in the market. …

… China’s prospects can be summed up in a pair of statistics: China has the world’s second-largest economy, but even 30 years of outstanding growth rates have left most of its people poor. It ranks 86th in per-capita GDP, according to the World Bank ranking for 2012, behind Mexico, South Africa, and Argentina, to name a few countries with troubles of their own.

Chinese growth by all accounts is slowing, although most people have no idea how much it’s slowing. They have only a well-founded suspicion that a government that fudged its statistics in good times will not be honest in more troubled times.