BRICS is an economic bloc with its name employed from the first letters of the member countries i.e. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. These all are newly emerging economic powers with their presence in G-20 as well. This bloc represents 42% of world population with 20 % of gross world product. Jim O’Neil coined this term in 2001 in his publication Building Better Global Economic BRICs.

An informal meeting of Foreign Ministers in 2006 at the margins of General debate of UNGA (UN General Assembly) triggered the process of its formation leading to the first full-scale diplomatic meeting of BRICS member states at Yekaterinburg, Russia in 2009.

The raison d’etre of this bloc was to have a legitimate involvement in the global affairs and neutralizing the hegemony of western dominated IMF and World Bank. This lead to the concept of “New Development bank” (formerly known as the “BRICS Development Bank”) and also a “new global reserve currency” vis-a-vis U.S dollars which would be more diversified, stable and predictable. The bank and reserve currency pool is destined to be of 100 billion dollars each.

Although, a lot of criticism has taken place against BRICS since its inception especially regarding the fragility of economic strength of few members, yet the group is highly determined to deter all suspicions and is heading towards the development of a potential economic bloc. There’s also a long list of countries that are in queue to be the part of BRICS among which Turkey, Argentina and Indonesia are the most interested ones.

RELATED PAGES
— United Nations (UN)
— SAARC