BRICS, a coalition of developing countries, has officially invited six countries to join the bloc, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced at the 15th annual summit in Johannesburg.
The group reached an agreement to invite Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to join BRICS, with membership coming into effect in January 2024.
All the invited countries had previously submitted proposals to become members.
“We value the interest of other countries in building a partnership with BRICS,” Mr. Ramaphosa said in an Aug. 24 statement. “We have tasked our foreign ministers to further develop the BRICS partner country model and a list of prospective partner countries and report by the next Summit.”
It has been reported that about 19 other nations have expressed interest in joining BRICS.
The objective behind bolstering the BRICS partnership is “to unlock infrastructure and development financing” and reform the multilateral trading system “so that we create a conducive environment for fair trade,” the South African president told a press briefing.
“This was part of the founding vision of the New Development Bank,” Mr. Ramaphosa said. “The Bank is playing a leading role in efforts to increase the resilience of the Global South and to bring fairness to global trading and financial systems by strengthening the use of BRICS currencies.”
Heading into the meeting, the New Development Bank (NDB), formerly referred to as the BRICS Development Bank, confirmed that it’s planning to issue its first rupee bond by October, one week after announcing a rand bond.
“NDB is seeking to increase its presence in the local capital markets of its member countries, to fund its robust portfolio of local currency loans,” said Vladimir Kazbekov, NDB’s chief operating officer, noting that an example would be an infrastructure project in South Africa that would be financed in the Chinese yuan and not the U.S. dollar.
By Andrew Moran
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