Opinion | Can BRICS+ Really Reshape US-Led Economic Order?

It is 15 years since its first summit. Back then. BRICS was BRIC. And now, it's not just BRICS but BRICS+. The summit in Kazan is seeing the member nations go up from five to nine, with one more, Saudi Arabia, having been invited to join. According to Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, there are 30 more countries that have been in touch over joining the BRICS+ in some format or the other.

When Goldman Sach's economist Jim O'Neill coined the acronym BRIC and predicted that the economies of the four member countries - Brazil, Russia, India, and China - would dominate the global economy by 2050, his projection was based only on the growth of the four nations. The grouping now represents a combined GDP that exceeds the G7's by "about 5 percentage points", said the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the eve of the Summit. A briefing note of the European Parliament, titled Expansion of BRICS: A Quest for Greater Global Influence, says that BRICS+ accounts for 37.3% of the world's GDP. That is more than half as much as the European Union's 14.5%.

Lavrov also lashed out at the US-led world order, saying, "The United States is unwilling to relinquish the reins of power that they have held since World War II through the Bretton Woods institutions and through the role assigned to the US dollar in the international monetary system, even after the free exchange of US dollars for gold had been cancelled. The leading position of this currency is maintained by efforts that are largely artificial."