BRICS

Nearly 30 countries have expressed a desire to become part of the BRICS group, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a press conference in Moscow on Thursday.

Pakistan has formally sought membership in BRICS, the grouping of five emerging economies that includes rival India alongside Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa. It comes at a time the body is fast gaining the status as the leading bloc of the Global South.

The rapid rise of the BRICS is transforming the global economy, with the group’s share of world GDP in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP) set to rise well beyond of that of the Group of Seven (G7) major advanced economies, Bloomberg has reported.

The five current members of the BRICS group increased trade by 56% from 2017 to 2022, reaching some $422 billion worth of turnover last year, Bloomberg has reported.

In a meeting in Tehran on Sunday noon, Iran's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hossein Amirabdollahian, and the Foreign Minister of South Africa convened to discuss not only bilateral relations but also their partnership within the BRICS group as well as the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza.

Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf says BRICS has its own money transfer system which can replace US-owned SWIFT.  

The Kremlin announced on Tuesday that the Russian and Iranian presidents held a telephone conversation on Tuesday at the initiative of the Iranian side. Vladimir Putin and Ebrahim Raisi have discussed the steps to ensure Tehran's joining full-fledged BRICS activities as well as the situation around Nagorno-Karabakh and the normalization of Armenia-Azerbaijan relations.

The expansion of BRICS is very important especially for energy sector, as after the inclusion of new members the bloc will account for over 80% of global oil reserves and production, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil told Sputnik on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly High-Level Week in New York.

An international relations expert has weighed in on negotiations over the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, JCPOA, as well as the possibility of reaching agreement with the US within the same framework that Iranian President has alluded to in his statements.

An Iranian foreign policy expert has praised Iran’s membership in the BRICS grouping, but has warned so long as Tehran is on the FATF list, it cannot use the membership benefits.

Iran’s ambassador to Moscow says the plot to isolate Iran in the international arena failed as a result of the country’s membership in BRICS.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has stated that the benefits of Tehran’s membership in the BRICS bloc of emerging economies would be historic.

The BRICS group is not trying to compete with or oppose any other nation or group, but nevertheless faces resistance from countries of the so-called “golden billion” that wish to preserve their global dominance, Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated.

Leaders of the BRICS group of developing nations have invited six states - Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - to become new members of the bloc, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa whose country is hosting a summit meeting of the BRICS grouping has confirmed.

A former Iranian diplomat says the group of industrial countries of the world known as the Group of Seven (G7) will seek to undercut BRICS, a bloc comprising the world’s emerging economies.

Argentina, Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia will become new members of BRICS, a correspondent with Brazil’s UOL news portal reported on Thursday citing a draft final statement of the group’s summit. Brazil is a BRICS member state.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has condemned the “Cold War mentality” still “haunting our world”, while laying out his geopolitical vision to the BRICS summit in South Africa. He stressed in an uncertain and unpredictable world, BRICS offers a path to “true multilateralism".

The Iranian president has arrived in the South African capital, Pretoria, to attend the 15th summit of BRICS, a grouping of the world economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Iranian President, Seyyed Ebrahim Raisi, is scheduled to fly to Johannesburg, South Africa, on Wednesday to attend the 15th BRICS summit.

Establishing sustainable payments mechanisms for mutual trade is among the key issues for the BRICS group of nations to discuss at their summit next month, the Russian foreign ministry has announced.