BRICS

BRICS is an international organization currently comprising ten countries: Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates. Its conceptual origins were articulated by Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov in 1998, and can be traced to informal forums and dialogue groups such as RIC (Russia, India, and China) and IBSA (India, Brazil, and South Africa). BRIC was originally a term coined by British economist Jim O'Neill, and later championed by his employer Goldman Sachs in 2001, to designate a group of emerging markets. The bloc's inaugural summit was held in 2009 and featured the founding countries of Brazil, Russia, India, and China; they adopted the acronym BRIC and formed an informal diplomatic group where their governments could meet annually at formal summits and coordinate multilateral policies. South Africa joined the organization in September 2010, which was then renamed BRICS, and attended the third summit in 2011 as a full member. Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates attended their first summit as member states in 2024 in Russia. Indonesia officially joined in early 2025, becoming the first Southeast Asian member. Saudi Arabia was invited at the Johannesburg summit and it is considered part of the organisation, but has not publicly confirmed its membership.…

BRICS is an international organization currently comprising ten countries: Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, South Africa and the United Arab Emirates. Its conceptual origins were articulated by Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov in 1998, and can be traced to informal forums and dialogue groups such as RIC (Russia, India, and China) and IBSA (India, Brazil, and South Africa). BRIC was originally a term coined by British economist Jim O'Neill, and later championed by his employer Goldman Sachs in 2001, to designate a group of emerging markets. The bloc's inaugural summit was held in 2009 and featured the founding countries of Brazil, Russia, India, and China; they adopted the acronym BRIC and formed an informal diplomatic group where their governments could meet annually at formal summits and coordinate multilateral policies. South Africa joined the organization in September 2010, which was then renamed BRICS, and attended the third summit in 2011 as a full member. Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates attended their first summit as member states in 2024 in Russia. Indonesia officially joined in early 2025, becoming the first Southeast Asian member. Saudi Arabia was invited at the Johannesburg summit and it is considered part of the organisation, but has not publicly confirmed its membership. The term BRICS+ has been informally used to reflect new membership since 2024. Collectively, BRICS comprises more than a quarter of the global economy and nearly half the world's population. The group has established multilateral institutions and financial mechanisms, such as the New Development Bank, the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement, and the BRICS PAY payment platform. It has also promoted de-dollarization initiatives to increase trade settlements in national currencies. Some commentators consider BRICS the alternative to the G7, and a major political force in the global international order. Others describe it as an incoherent affiliation of disparate countries centered on increasing anti-European and anti-American objectives. Nevertheless, all five original members, as well as Indonesia, are also part of the G20. BRICS has received both praise and criticism from numerous commentators and world leaders. ==History== ===Founding=== Collective action in the political arena in the late 1990s was present before the economic rationale of BRICS. The idea of a multipolar group like BRICS can be traced back to Yevgeny Primakov during his term as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia. He reiterated the idea in New Delhi in 1998. The forums RIC (Russia, India, China) and IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) predated and played an important role in the creation of BRIC and subsequently BRICS. , headquartered in Shanghai, China, is the premier institution of BRICS. The term BRIC, as compared to the alternate term CRIB, was originally developed in the context of foreign investment strategies. It was introduced in the 2001 publication, Building Better Global Economic BRICs by Jim O'Neill, then head of global economics research at Goldman Sachs and later Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. O'Neill now regards the BRICS group as a failed project. In a 2021 article for Project Syndicate he wrote that the BRICS countries "have so far proven incapable of uniting as a meaningful global force" and felt in 2024 that "each year also brings further confirmation that the grouping serves no real purpose beyond generating symbolic gestures and lofty rhetoric". The foreign ministers of the initial four BRIC states (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) met in New York City in September 2006 at the margins of the General Debate of the UN Assembly, beginning a series of high-level meetings. A full-scale diplomatic meeting was held in Yekaterinburg, Russia, on 16 June 2009. The BRIC group's first formal summit, also held in Yekaterinburg, commenced on 16 June 2009, with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Dmitry Medvedev, Manmohan Singh, and Hu Jintao, the respective leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, all attending. The summit's focus was on improving the global economic situation and reforming financial institutions amid the Great Recession. There was also discussion of how the four countries could better cooperate in the future, and ways developing countries, such as three-fourths of the BRIC members, could become more involved in global affairs. In the aftermath of the 2009 Yekaterinburg summit, the BRIC nations announced the need for a new global reserve currency, which would have to be "diverse, stable and predictable". Although their statement did not directly criticize the perceived dominance of the US dollar (as Russia had in the past) it did spark a fall in the value of the dollar against other major currencies. ===2010 expansion=== In 2010, South Africa began efforts to join BRIC, and the process for its formal admission began in August of that year. South Africa officially became a member nation on 24 December 2010 after being formally invited by China, and was subsequently accepted by other BRIC countries. The group was renamed BRICS to represent the addition of South Africa to the original four BRIC members. At the third BRICS summit in 2011 in Sanya, China, South African president Jacob Zuma represented the country as a full member for the first time. === Status of Saudi Arabia=== Saudi Arabia's status within BRICS has been described inconsistently by official and independent sources. At the 15th BRICS summit in Johannesburg in August 2023, Saudi Arabia was one of six countries invited to become full members of BRICS from 1 January 2024. Unlike Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates, which accepted invitations to join the group, Saudi Arabia did not publicly confirm that it had formally accepted its invitation. In January 2024, Saudi Minister of Commerce Majid bin Abdullah Al Qasabi stated that Saudi Arabia had "not yet officially joined BRICS". In May 2025, Reuters reported that Saudi Arabia had "held off formally joining" the group, despite being listed as a member on the official BRICS website. Official BRICS material has nevertheless classified Saudi Arabia as a full member. The website of the 2025 Brazilian BRICS presidency described BRICS as consisting of eleven countries, including Saudi Arabia, and listed the kingdom among the group's member countries. The Government of India, which holds the 2026 BRICS presidency, has similarly treated Saudi Arabia as one of the eleven BRICS members. A July 2026 government release referred to the "eleven BRICS member countries" and included Saudi Arabia in the list, while an August 2026 release stated that BRICS "brings together eleven" countries and again included Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia's own official terminology has remained inconsistent. During the 17th BRICS summit in July 2025, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) stated that Saudi Arabia was participating "as an invited country to join the BRICS group", rather than describing it as a member. This inconsistency continued during BRICS meetings in New Delhi in May 2026. On 14 May, SPA reported that the kingdom participated "in its capacity as a BRICS member country", while a report issued the following day stated that "Saudi Arabia participated as an invited country". Consequently, Saudi Arabia is listed as a BRICS member by official BRICS sources and is treated as one by other members of the organization, while Saudi Arabia continues to maintain ambiguity regarding its status. ==Member states== ==Financial architecture== The group is dominated by China, which has the largest share of the group's GDP, accounting for about 70% of the organization's total. The financial architecture of BRICS is made of the New Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA). These components were signed into a treaty in 2014 and became active in 2015. ===New Development Bank=== The New Development Bank (NDB), formally referred to as the BRICS Development Bank, is a multilateral development bank operated by the five BRICS states. The bank's primary focus of lending is infrastructure projects with authorized lending of up to $34 billion annually. South Africa hosts the African headquarters of the bank. The bank has a starting capital of $50 billion, with wealth increased to $100 billion over time. Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa initially contributed $10 billion each to bring the total to $50 billion. As of 2020, it had 53 projects underway worth around $15 billion. By 2024 the bank had approved more than $32 billion for 96 projects. In 2021, Bangladesh, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Uruguay joined the NDB. ===BRICS payment system=== At the 2015 BRICS summit in Russia, ministers from the BRICS states initiated consultations for a payment system that would be an alternative to the SWIFT system. The stated goal was to initially move to settlements in national currencies. The Central Bank of Russia highlighted the main benefits as backup and redundancy in case there were disruptions to the SWIFT system. China also launched its alternative to SWIFT: the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, which enables financial institutions worldwide to send and receive information about financial transactions. India also has its alternative Structured Financial Messaging System (SFMS), as do Russia SPFS and Brazil Pix. ==See also== Member states of BRICS List of BRICS summit attendees List of country groupings BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement ==External links== BRICS information portal, a Joint website of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the BRICS member States BRICS Joint Statistical Publication BRICS Information Centre. University of Toronto

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