BRICS has emerged as one of the most dynamic groups on the international stage, with its core expansion attracting a significant number of developing economies eager to join the platform. As the appeal of BRICS grows in the Global South, questions arise about how to balance this greater inclusiveness with efficiency in decision-making.
The increasing membership could potentially make attaining consensus within BRICS more challenging. While the shift towards inclusivity is inevitable, one of the key challenges lies in ensuring that this trend does not compromise the group’s operational effectiveness.
China plays a special role in this quest to balance inclusiveness and efficiency. As the initiator of the “BRICS Plus” cooperation model in 2017, China has spurred a wave of applications from developing economies seeking to join the BRICS family. While China’s efforts have made BRICS more inclusive, there’s now an opportunity to focus on initiatives that enhance the group’s effectiveness, particularly in economic cooperation among BRICS Plus economies, especially in trade and investment.
One approach is to create a BRICS Plus “partnership belt” encompassing regional integration arrangements in which the BRICS core economies are members. This would significantly expand the BRICS partnership circle through the regional partners of the group’s core economies. More importantly, it would establish a platform for trade liberalization among the BRICS Plus economies, whose trade policies are increasingly influenced by their regional integration blocs.
This co-integration of regional blocs led by BRICS core economies could open avenues for regional development institutions—most notably regional and multilateral development banks such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Eurasian Development Bank, and others from the Global South—to collaborate in co-financing priority projects across the developing world. This cooperation among regional development institutions could be coordinated by the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB), which is becoming an increasingly active participant in global economic and investment platforms.
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BRICS at a crucial juncture: Between inclusiveness and efficiency
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