Impact of Brics Countries on the Global Economy

Despite its strange origins and some serious challenges confronting it, the bloc of countries that has emerged into the international arena under the acronym BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) has the potential for being a positive force in world affairs. Strange things happen in the world. Imagine a grouping of countries spread across the globe, which gets formed only for the simple reason that an analyst for an investment bank decides that these countries have some things in common, including future potential for growth, and then creates an acronym of their names! Bizarre but true.The original categorisation of the BRIC countries (by Jim ONeill of Goldman Sachs in an article in 2001) contained only Brazil, Russia, India and China. He described the countries with the most economic potential for growth in the first half of the 21st century, based on features like size of population and therefore potential market demography (predominantly young populations with likely falling dependency ratios) recent growth rates and embrace of globalisation. So China was to become the most important global exporter of manufactured goods (which indeed has already occurred) India the most significant exporter of services and Russia and Brazil would dominate as exporters of raw materials.BRICS is one of several new initiatives of different countries in the world to break out of the Northern axis G12 (G20-G8), IBSA, BASIC and so on. While the origin of the grouping may be odd, and the countries are indeed remarkably diverse, there are some commonalities that are important. Subsequently, in fact, these countries have since shown significant interest in meeting periodically, working together, and finding some synergies and new ways of cooperation.

So trade between BRICS countries soared after they became recognised as a combination (although of course this is a period when trade between developing and emerging markets in general has grown much faster than aggregate world trade). Investment links have been growing too, mainly through Chinese involvement in different countries and some interest shown by large Indian capital. And more recently there have been other moves that suggest an appetite for newer and further forms of close economic and political interaction and co-ordination. They have recently acted in concert in several international platforms, most recently pledging $75 billion to the International Monetary Fund (conditional on IMF voting reform). Other economic initiatives include agreement to denominate bilateral trade in each others currencies, and plans for a development bank. There have also been declarations in favour of a shared approach in foreign policy, particularly responses to US and European policies in the Middle East and elsewhere.In fact there is great potential in these five countries not just combining to address global issues, but perhaps even more significantly, learning from one another. For example, India has much to learn from Brazil and China in the matter of development banking. From the early 1990s, India has set about destroying the potential of its own development banks, in both agriculture and industry