Jiang Shixue

Opinion | 6 questions Brics must answer if it wants to stay relevant

The members of the enlarged grouping would do well to arrive at a consensus on goals and ways to effectively reach them

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Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Chinese President Xi Jinping, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov pose for a photo during the Brics summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, on August 23, 2023. Photo: AP

Jiang Shixue

Published: 8:30pm, 16 Oct 2024

Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill could not have foreseen that his acronym Bric (Brazil, Russia, India and China), used in his November 2001 paper “Building Better Global Economic BRICs”, would inspire those four emerging economies to form an organisation with the same name, holding their first summit in 2009.

In 2011, South Africa was admitted to the bloc, thus changing its name to Brics. This year, more countries – Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates – have joined.

Expansion of the grouping’s membership might be on the agenda for the 16th Brics summit in Kazan, Russia, scheduled for October 22-24. Nobody knows what the outcome will be but there are a few questions worth asking as the summit approaches.

First, how will Brics carry out economic cooperation? Cooperation among members has been driven by the three wheels of political security, economics and people-to-people exchanges. With more members, can the grouping still make progress in these areas?

For political cooperation, it’s not difficult to publish a joint statement at a summit outlining positions and objectives on global issues. When it comes to cultural exchanges, members can just as easily organise a sporting event or co-sponsor a film. However, economic cooperation is easier said than done.

With the exception of the New Development Bank, there hasn’t been much to show for economic cooperation within Brics. As such, the group has been described by many people as being all talk and no action.