The rise of BRIC countries represents a fundamental shift in global economy and the developing world needs a legitimate seat at the table so that shared challenges are better addressed, a powerful US Senator has said.

"It is certainly true that rise of the so-called 'BRIC countries'-- Brazil, Russia, India and China--represents a fundamental global economic shift," Senator John Kerry, chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said at a Congressional hearing on global economy on Tuesday.

"Twenty years ago, the President's most important global financial trip would have been to Europe. On Wednesday it is to Beijing.

"Clearly, the developing world needs a legitimate seat at the table so that all of us can better address our shared challenges," Kerry said.

"When President Obama announced from Pittsburgh that the G20 would replace the G8, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew called it an implicit acknowledgement that the post-World War II order had come to an end," he said.

"We have already begun this process by recognising the G20 as the premier economic coordinating forum, and it has made encouraging progress since.

"A year ago, at the height of the crisis, it convened for the first time at the leader's level and launched the largest and most coordinated fiscal and monetary stimulus ever undertaken," Kerry said.

In his statement, the Senator said the global economy has changed, quickly and profoundly.

"Twenty years ago, worldwide capital flows were less than 20 per cent of what they are on Wednesday. Ten years ago, much of Asia was in economic disarray," he said.

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