(Kitco News) – As chatter about de-dollarization intensifies, the BRICS bloc continues to see surging interest from potential new members as reports indicate there are currently 34 countries showing interest in joining the intergovernmental organization.
A report from TASS quoted Russian President Vladimir Putin as saying that as many as 34 countries have expressed a desire to participate in BRICS in some capacity while he spoke at a meeting with BRICS representatives in charge of security.
“We cannot ignore the growing interest in BRICS on the part of many countries,” Putin said. “As of today, over thirty countries, 34 countries, to be precise, have already expressed interest in joining the activities of our group in one form or another.”
He added that Russia, in its current role as BRICS chairman, is doing everything possible to help welcome and integrate new member states into the organization. “Our chairmanship has a special mission - to assist in every way in the swift and natural integration of new member states in all BRICS mechanisms,” he said.
Due to the rising interest from outside countries, Putin said, “An active discussion with all BRICS participants followed on the modality of the new category of member states which will be approved in Kazan [at the October 22-24 summit],” adding that “There are also plans to consider other potential candidates for this status.”
Following the launch of BRICS in 2009 with Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa as its founding members, the bloc has expanded to 11 members with the addition of Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
BRICS+ members now account for 45% of the world’s population, 25% of global trade, and 31.5% of global GDP.
According to a report from the BRICS portal, Malaysia and Thailand are among the countries interested in joining the bloc, which suggests the “prospects and possibilities of a broader cooperative framework that could involve BRICS+ and ASEAN.”
“Indeed, the active participation of ASEAN countries in the BRICS+ format in 2022-2023 created the conditions for deepening the interaction of the ASEAN bloc not only with the BRICS countries, but also with other integration groups of the Global South,” noted Yaroslav Lissovolik, founder of BRICS+ Analytics. “As I repeatedly argued since 2017-2018, one possible modification of the coordinated mechanism between ASEAN and the BRICS regional integration arrangements could be the BEAMS framework, which brings together BIMSTEC (India/South Asia), the Eurasian Economic Union (Russia/Eurasia), the ASEAN-China FTA (East Asia), MERCOSUR (Brazil/South America), and the Southern African Customs Union (South Africa).”
“The creation of such a network of regional integration blocs would significantly accelerate and expand economic cooperation between BRICS+ and ASEAN, and could also become the basis for stimulating trade and investment along the South-South axis,” Lissovolik said.
“Another potential area of cooperation between BRICS and ASEAN within the BRICS+ format could be greater participation of ASEAN countries in the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB),” he added. “In recent periods, the NDB membership has increased with new members from Africa (Egypt), the Middle East (United Arab Emirates, UAE), South America (Uruguay (prospective member)) and South Asia (Bangladesh).”
“There remains significant scope for adding new BRICS NDB members from the East Asian region, in particular ASEAN members such as Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia – countries that have already participated in the BRICS+ summit in 2022,” Lissovolik noted. “This, in turn, will expand the possibilities for BRICS-ASEAN economic cooperation through development institutions in areas such as transport connectivity projects, digital economy and human capital development.”
The expanding list of prospective members underscores the growing strength of the bloc, which is quickly moving to de-dollarize and focus on their local currencies to help grow their economies.
“Amid focused debates and high optimism to establish an economic clout, BRICS, together with new members and its partners (outreach format) are steadily looking forward to a new era of de-dollarizing the global economic system by introducing a new currency and also to set up a new payment system, most likely, during the forthcoming October 2024 summit in Kazan, the Republic of Tatarstan,” wrote Kester Kenn Klomegah, an independent researcher and writer on African affairs in the EurAsian region and former Soviet republics.
“In pursuit of defining the collective determination to achieve these economic policy goals, BRICS has over the months been deliberating broadly the effectiveness and the importance its newly-designed mechanisms and a well-balanced approach for reconstructing the western-dominated dollar-system in the world,” he added.
Viktoria Panova, head of an expert council tasked with overseeing Russia’s presidency of BRICS, previously said that creating the framework for a joint payment mechanism will be a key discussion topic at the upcoming summit.
“Active efforts are underway to create a financial payment mechanism that would make cooperation between BRICS countries easier, maintaining their sovereign trade and economic exchanges,” she said. “This issue tops the agenda because every member of the group sees it as important.”
In July, news emerged that BRICS members had developed a system similar to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), which will operate on the basis of the BRICS Bridge supranational payment platform.
“Payments will be conducted in the national currencies of BRICS countries, while the New Development Bank will act as a platform for integration, conversion and clearing,” Klomegah noted. “As BRICS association continues to challenge the US dollar dominance in the global markets, creating the payment system has become the highest priority, the financial project seriously heading for a debut at the upcoming 2024 summit.”
The primary goal of the BRICS Bridge is to give developing countries, especially in the Global South, the ability to limit or restrict their dependence on the U.S. dollar by promoting their own national currencies for trade settlements, Klomegah said.
Klomegah concluded by noting that in early August, “several policy experts and scholars acknowledged that the BRICS payment platform development has reached an advanced stage, and if it continued as planned, it would explode as a bombshell globally.”
“The BRICS Bridge could have an expected impact as majority members of the association declared their support for de-dollarization approach or process, (unfathomable tragedy for the western currency’s future) and promoting unilateral trade,” he said. “It could however increase the overall trade dealings and essentially strengthen emerging relationships between the association’s members in the long term.”
According to a report from Equip Editorial, the ultimate goal of the BRICS+ expansion is to balance the power between the G7 nations and BRICS.
“The emerging countries that comprise the BRICS group are leading a geopolitical paradigm shift towards a fairer and more equitable global economic balance, as opposed to the dominance of the G7 in an increasingly multipolar world,” the author wrote. “While there is still a long way to go, the pillars of a new world order are being formed.”
“Economic cycles and financial markets are becoming less and less centred on the US-dominated monetary system, giving way to alternatives that are rebalancing the map of global economic power,” they noted. “In this context, Western hegemony is threatened by increasingly influential coalitions of emerging countries that, through their cooperation and competition, shape the global economic and political order to the detriment of a status quo of power that has hitherto regarded them as second-division players with no say.”
Equip Editorial highlighted that the G7 currently accounts for 43% of global GDP, but said, “The gap will narrow as major BRICS countries, such as India, continue to grow at an above-average rate and as the alliance welcomes more members in the future.”
“It should be borne in mind that, although the Western bloc has more wealth, the emerging countries have more population and concentrate oil production,” they noted. “With the addition of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, the BRICS more than doubled its members’ share of global oil production to 43 percent.”
“Currently, many of the BRICS member countries have higher real GDP growth rates than their G7 counterparts,” they added. “Moreover, according to Goldman Sachs, they are expected to achieve an average GDP growth rate of between 189% and 205% by 2050, compared to an average G7 growth rate of 50%.”
“In short, although much work remains to be done, it cannot be denied that the voice of the Global South is becoming louder and clearer on the world’s geopolitical chessboard,” Equip Editorial concluded. “Therefore, the reform of institutions and mechanisms that are supposedly multilateral, but have so far favoured the Western geopolitical bloc, seems inevitable in the face of a more balanced distribution of global power.”
