What results did BRICS bring to the summit in Kazan?

The 16th BRICS summit begins in Kazan. RBC analyzed the results of the association over the 18 years of its existence, as well as how the range of issues discussed by its participants has changed

The 16th BRICS summit begins in Kazan on October 22. As Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov told journalists the day before, delegations from 36 countries and six international organizations will attend, including 22 heads of state and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

RUSSIA, the host of the summit, is chairing BRICS for the fourth time. Its current motto is “Strengthening multilateralism for equitable global development and security.” According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Moscow has already held about 200 events and fulfilled the plan of the presidency by more than 80%.

RBC analyzed how the association has evolved over almost 20 years, what projects it has implemented, and what difficulties it faces.

How BRICS differs from other international organizations

BRICS is not a bloc or an alliance like NATO or the European Union, but rather a "club of interests." The association has no charter, single currency, common budget, secretariat or other supranational structures. Russia's Sherpa in BRICS, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, speaking about the disadvantages of the format on the eve of the summit in Kazan, drew attention to the fact that the interests of the member countries do not always coincide, and therefore much time and effort is spent on coordinating decisions. "The absence of statutory documents regulating the obligations of the parties, the fact that decisions are a reflection of the political will of states, a certain volatility of interaction, which is affected by the dynamics of current international processes and changing priorities of governments, are also certainly present," he said, emphasizing that the advantages of interaction within BRICS "more than" offset all these disadvantages.

Economic issues occupy a central place on the BRICS agenda - it was on this platform that the participating countries, in particular, discussed how to cope with the consequences of the global financial crisis of 2008 and the covid-19 pandemic . At the same time, the participants of the association especially note that together they account for more than a third of the global gross domestic product (GDP) and almost half of the world's population. In his address to the Business Forum, Vladimir Putin said that by 2024 , the association's share in the world GDP would exceed that of the G7. "1992, the Group of Seven - 45.5%. And in the same year, the BRICS countries, 1992 - 16.7% of the world GDP. And now, in 2023, our association is 37.4%, and the Group of Seven - 29.3%. The gap is widening, and it will widen, this is inevitable," he said.

The BRICS association was created in June 2006. At that time, on Moscow's initiative, the foreign ministers of Brazil, India, CHINA and Russia met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. They agreed to hold the first summit in Yekaterinburg in 2009 in 2008 on the sidelines of the G8 in Japan. The idea for the name itself - an acronym made up of the first letters of the names of the four countries - arose thanks to an analytical note by Jim O'Neill, HEAD of the global economic research department at the American financial and investment company Goldman Sachs: in 2001, he proposed using BRIC to designate the four most dynamically developing countries that could take leading positions in the global economy.

How BRICS expansion proceeded and who is participating in it

BRICS has had two waves of expansion. In 2010, South Africa joined BRICS, and the letter C (South Africa) was added to the name. China proposed launching the second wave in 2022  — to “increase the representation of the association and its influence in the world.” By August 2023, when the 15th summit was held in Johannesburg, 20 countries had applied to join the association. Six were invited to BRICS — Argentina, Egypt , Iran, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, and Ethiopia. Of these countries, four definitely joined BRICS on January 1, 2024 — Egypt, Iran, the UAE, and Ethiopia.

Argentina planned to join the organization, but at the end of 2023, the new president of the republic, Javier Miley, refused (according to BLOOMBERG , the European Union asked him to wait with his participation in BRICS amid the conflict in Ukraine ). The status of Saudi Arabia is still unclear. It received an invitation to BRICS and was on the list of countries that joined it in 2024, but Riyadh did not confirm this - either through statements or participation in the format's events. Ryabkov called Saudi Arabia's membership in BRICS an indisputable fact, but the kingdom's Minister of Trade Majid al-Qasabi said that Saudi Arabia had not officially joined the format. At the summit in Kazan, the kingdom will be represented by its Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud. According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov , Saudi Arabia's status in BRICS will be clarified during this summit.

In September of this year, Bloomberg reported that Turkey had applied to join BRICS. There was no official confirmation of this from Ankara. Nevertheless, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will take part in the summit in Kazan. “BRICS has a long-standing tradition of inviting countries in the so-called outreach format along with the members of the association,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in an interview with RBC. “For example, in June, when I held a meeting of heads of foreign policy departments in Nizhny Novgorod, Hakan Fidan, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey, was among the guests. Now President Erdogan has been invited in the same capacity.”

BRICS began working with third countries in the early 2010s — for this purpose, it launched the BRICS Plus/Outreach format; negotiations in this format were first held in 2013 at the summit in Durban (South Africa). According to Ryabkov, the difference between “plus” and “outreach” is that “BRICS Plus” includes all countries that are not part of the association, while “BRICS Outreach” includes states that are in geographical proximity to the chairing country. This is why Russia invited its CIS neighbors to the summit in Kazan. The theme of the meeting of this format in Kazan is “BRICS and the Global South — Joint Construction of a Better World.” BRICS is currently developing categories of partner countries — the so-called steps that countries will need to go through before full membership.

Until 2023, BRICS had no clear criteria for membership — they were agreed upon at the summit in Johannesburg, but they have not yet been compiled into any official document. The parameters agreed upon by BRICS leaders can only be judged by the statements of their representatives. According to Lavrov, the main thing taken into account is the “weight, authority, and significance of a particular applicant country” and its position on the international stage; he included countries that support multipolarity, the need for more democratic and fair international relations, and insist on increasing the role of the global South in global governance mechanisms among like-minded states. Ryabkov also named “absolute, unconditional non-participation in any unilateral sanctions regimes directed against any of the current BRICS participants” among the criteria.

According to Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov, 33 countries want to join BRICS in one form or another; for example, the authorities of Burkina Faso, Turkey, Serbia, and Sri Lanka have spoken about this. There is no consensus on the topic of expansion in BRICS yet. “Some of the current member countries believe that it would be better to stop at ten. Others are in favor of further expansion: moreover, they even name specific countries that could be accepted as members,” Ushakov said on October 10, noting that the leaders would address this issue in Kazan. In any case, Moscow believes that it is necessary to “take a break” in expansion for now, “to ‘digest’ the new arrivals.”

What economic successes has BRICS achieved?

With the expansion of BRICS in 2024, the nominal economic power of the association has grown to $28.3 trillion (total GDP at current prices as of the end of 2023, according to the IMF ), or 36% of world GDP at purchasing power parity. The BRICS countries are home to about 45% of the world's population (approximately 3.6 billion people).

However, economic heterogeneity and the still low level of trade integration (for example, in 2023, Russia significantly increased its trade turnover with China and India, to a total of $305 billion, but with Brazil and South Africa it remains low - only $13 billion in 2023) limit the BRICS's ability to influence world trade and the international monetary system, analysts at the Central Bank of France argued in February 2024. While the share of the expanded BRICS in global exports is 25%, only 15% of this figure (or 3.7 percentage points) are deliveries to other countries of the association, and 85% (21.1 percentage points) are exports to the rest of the world, the Bank of France cites its calculations.

But the intensity of trade within the bloc is growing, notes the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In particular, Western sanctions have led to the redirection of Russian exports to the BRICS countries, especially India and China, BCG points out.

In the financial sphere, the BRICS countries have reached two legally formalized solutions: in 2014, the multilateral New Development Bank (NDB) was created and a pool of conditional foreign exchange reserves with a total volume of $100 billion was organized, as researcher Marta Bono from the University of Palermo summarizes in her review The Dark Side of the BRICS: The Lack of Legal Definition. “This year, we want to complete negotiations so that countries, if they experience pressure on the balance of payments, can receive funds from this pool in national currencies,” said the head of the Bank of Russia Elvira Nabiullina in January 2024. The NDB calls itself an international institution and complies with Western sanctions against Russia (which owns 18.98% of the bank’s capital); new NDB projects in the country have been put on hold.

The authorized capital of the NDB is $100 billion. The bank's goal is to finance infrastructure projects and sustainable development projects of BRICS members and developing countries. It focuses on projects in areas such as clean energy and energy efficiency, transport infrastructure, water supply and sanitation, environmental protection, social and digital infrastructure. As indicated on the NDB website, since 2016, the bank has invested in 138 projects. They are distributed among seven countries: China (35 projects), India (34), Brazil (31), Russia (18), South Africa (14), Bangladesh (4), Egypt (2).

Recently, against the backdrop of sanctions, Russian representatives have named several initiatives that, according to them, are being discussed within the BRICS framework: this includes the possible creation of a permanent tax secretariat, the development of a “payment and settlement circuit” for foreign trade transactions, and the creation of the BRICS Clear depository system. “The creation of a decentralized system for recording and circulating securities is a very correct initiative, it must be supported by all means. As far as I know, colleagues from the NSD (National Settlement Depository) are starting testing with Egypt and Iran,” says Andrey Mikhailishin, head of the BRICS Payments and Fintech target subgroup of the Russian part of the Financial Services working group of the BRICS Business Council. “In order for the BRICS Clear project to be included in the agreed section of the annual report of the BRICS Business Council, my colleagues from the NSD and I had the most difficult discussions to bring our positions closer together with the Chinese and South African parties,” Mikhailishin also noted.

In the Johannesburg Declaration of 2023, BRICS members emphasized "the importance of encouraging the use of national currencies in international trade and financial transactions between BRICS countries and their trading partners." In October 2024, Ryabkov reported that the share of national currencies in Russia's trade with the BRICS countries had reached 65%. The BRICS countries do want to reduce their dependence on the DOLLAR, but rather by expanding the use of local currencies than by creating a common currency, according to economists at the Bank of France. One option is the internationalization of the Chinese yuan, which could eventually become a new reserve currency for cross-border transactions. A single new BRICS currency is still a "utopia," VEB.RF senior banker Sergei Storchak admitted in 2023.

It is too early to talk about the prospects of a currency union and the creation of a single currency in the BRICS format, agrees Ekaterina Arapova, DIRECTOR of the Center for Expertise in Sanctions Policy at the Institute of International Studies at MGIMO. "But the process of increasing the role of the currencies of the BRICS member countries in the international monetary and financial system will definitely continue. At the same time, the importance of national currencies as reserves, primarily the Chinese yuan, will grow within BRICS," Arapova is sure.

According to her, although China maintains currency restrictions, the share of reserves stored in yuan will grow within the Global South and BRICS. "This is due to the fact that trade within the BRICS bloc is growing faster, it is becoming a little more balanced. In addition, within BRICS, there is an obvious trend towards developing trade in national currencies," the expert points out. "Naturally, in order to fully trade in national currencies, you need to have a stable reserve of currencies in which foreign trade transactions are carried out. Therefore, the process of accumulating BRICS currencies as reserves is inevitable - primarily yuan, but in principle this also applies to the Russian ruble, the Indian rupee, and the Arab dirham," Arapova explains.

In October 2024, Russia, as the BRICS chair for the current year, presented a report with proposals for reforming the settlement system and ensuring investment within the association. In particular, it was proposed to create a "fast, cheap and reliable" system of cross-border payments using distributed ledger technology. "The problem is that there is nothing new in the proposals of the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank," Mikhailishin is skeptical. "A number of proposals look like slogans, there is a great lack of specific practical steps and practice, what are we proposing," he said, adding that it would be possible to analyze past experience, when the countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance used the transferable ruble or the future eurozone used the ECU unit of account at one time.

“We are discussing issues related to payments, international payments, with the BRICS countries, conducting research on this topic, but it is too early to talk about specific results,” the head of the Bank of Russia Elvira Nabiullina told journalists on October 17.

How the BRICS agenda has evolved

The changes in BRICS rhetoric and the range of topics discussed can be traced in the 15 final documents of the 15 summits of the association (held in the countries chairing them in turn). The first summit (Yekaterinburg, 2009) took place against the backdrop of the global financial crisis, so the main topic was the fight against this crisis with the key role of the G20. The first final statement was the most compact - it consisted of only 16 points. Then the final declarations began to grow - the largest document was adopted in 2016 following the summit in Goa (India), it consisted of 110 points.

All declarations have several common provisions that BRICS has repeated from summit to summit since 2009. First of all, this is the reform of global governance institutions – strengthening the central role of the UN and transforming the Security Council; strengthening the status of Brazil, India and South Africa in the UN; reforming the Bretton Woods system with the redistribution of quotas and votes in favor of developing countries. “The IMF reform should strengthen the voice and representativeness of the poorest members of the organization, including sub-Saharan African countries,” BRICS believes. Since 2009, the members of the format have been saying that they need a “stable, predictable and more diversified monetary system” and a “more democratic and fair multipolar world order.”

In addition, the BRICS countries call on other members of the international community to refrain from protectionism with the central role of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and describe which projects and initiatives are working within the framework of the format (for example, the declaration of the 2014 summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, proclaimed the creation of the NDB and a pool of foreign exchange reserves).

In its declarations, BRICS also assesses international events, and the further, the more so: if the 2010 declaration only noted solidarity with the people of Haiti in connection with the earthquake, then in the 2023 document the range of statements was much broader - from condemnation of unilateral sanctions, mention of the Iranian nuclear issue and the arms race in space to the settlement of the conflict in Ukraine (gratitude for "offers of mediation and good offices") and the conflict in the Middle East ("the establishment of a sovereign, independent and viable state of Palestine").

How much solidarity do the BRICS countries have in the political sphere?

At the same time, it cannot be said that the members of the association have a single foreign policy. To understand how consonant the positions of the BRICS countries are on key international issues, RBC analyzed how the countries voted in the UN General Assembly (GA) on the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.

In the first case, we are talking about the following six documents adopted at the extraordinary session of the General Assembly on Ukraine in 2022–2023.

• Resolution ES-11/1 (March 2, 2022), which calls for the “immediate, complete and unconditional” withdrawal of Russian troops from the territory of the neighboring state.
• Resolution ES-11/2 (24 March 2022) reiterating the call.
• Resolution ES-11/3 (April 7, 2022), which suspends Russia's participation in the UN Human Rights Council (HRC).
• Resolution ES-11/4 (12 October 2022) on referendums in Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Luhansk and Kherson regions.
• Resolution ES-11/5 (14 November 2022), which states that Russia “must be held accountable for any violations of international law in or against Ukraine.”
• Resolution ES-11/6 ( 23 February 2023), which calls for a diplomatic solution to the conflict and demands the withdrawal of Russian troops.

Russia voted against all resolutions. India and South Africa abstained from voting on all documents. Brazil, Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia supported four resolutions and abstained from voting on two, which dealt with excluding Russia from the HRC and holding it accountable.

Regarding the conflict in the Middle East, RBC analyzed the voting on four documents.

• Resolution A/ES-10/L.25 (27 October 2023), which calls for “the protection of the civilian population of Gaza and the establishment of a humanitarian ceasefire.”
• Resolution A/RES/ES-10/22 (12 December 2023) on an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.
• Resolution A/RES/ES-10/23 (10 May 2024) on the admission of Palestine to the UN.
• Resolution A/ES-10/L.31/Rev.1 (18 September 2024), which demands that Israel “put an immediate end to its illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” within one year.

Here, the BRICS countries never voted against. India and Ethiopia abstained from voting on two documents - the first resolution on the ceasefire and the fourth on ending Israel's presence in Palestine. Otherwise, there was consensus among the BRICS countries on the Middle East conflict.