BRICS adds Saudi, UAE among six new members; Modi backs further expansion

The expansion of the bloc will allow it to forge into a viable counterweight to the West, with Beijing and Moscow pushing for it the most.

Leaders of the BRICS group of developing nations on August 24 invited six countries, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates, to join, in a move aimed at growing the clout of a bloc that has pledged to champion the "Global South".

BRICS - short for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, have come to a consensus on the first phase of the group's expansion, which will come into effect on January 1, 2024.

The 2023 BRICS Summit is going on at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg, where India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in attendance.

More than 40 countries have expressed interest in joining BRICS, say South African officials, and 22 have formally asked to be admitted.

They represent a disparate pool of potential candidates motivated largely by a desire to level a global playing field many consider rigged against them and attracted by BRICS' promise to rebalance the global order.

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Announcing the expansion, South Africa's president Cyril Ramaphosa said, “This summit reaffirmed the importance of BRICS, people-to-people exchanges & enhancing friendship & cooperation...We adopted the Johannesburg two declarations which reflect key BRICS messages on matters of global economic, financial & political importance. It demonstrates the shared values & common interests that underlie our mutually beneficial cooperation as the five BRICS countries...”

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PM Modi backs expansion

The expansion of the bloc will allow it to forge into a viable counterweight to the West, with Beijing and Moscow pushing for it the most.

PM Modi congratulated Ramaphosa for the successful summit and said India has always fully supported the expansion of BRICS membership.

He said: "India has always supported the expansion of BRICS. India has always believed that adding new members will strengthen BRICS as an organisation and it will give our shared efforts a new impetus. This will also strengthen the belief of many countries in the multipolar world order. I am glad that in this 3-day meeting, a lot of positive results have come out.”

He further added, "Expansion and modernisation of BRICS is an indication that institutions of the world must get accustomed to changing times. This is an initiative that can be an example of reforms in other global institutions that were established in the 20th century.”

The above was PM Modi's reference to the long-pending demand of some of the developing nations to expand the UN Security Council by increasing the number of both permanent and non-permanent representatives.

On the occasion of the 15th anniversary of BRICS, we have taken the decision to expand this forum. India has always fully supported this expansion. Such an expansion will make BRICS stronger and more effective.

In that spirit, India welcomes Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran,…

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) August 24, 2023

Western reaction

On August 23, Jim O’Neill, a cross-bench peer in the House of Lords, UK parliament, had asked of the impact of Saudi Arabia signing up and what it would mean for oil sales to other members. “The first thing is whether they then start actually pricing the oil in all these local currencies and not in the dollar."

He added: “They’ve had enough difficulty trying to agree just between the five of them. So beyond the admittedly hugely powerful symbolism, I’m not quite sure what having a lot more countries in there is going to achieve.”

"The enlargement of the BRICS is driven by the desire to build an alternative to an international system centered on US hegemony,” said Hasnain Malik, a strategist at Tellimer told Bloomberg. “A distinction should be drawn between the use of the US dollar as a trading currency, which may erode as many seek an alternative, and as a reserve currency, which almost no other country or group of countries have the size, institutional credibility, and freely convertible characteristics, to rival.”

New member reaction

Iran hailed the expansion of BRICS as 'success for foreign policy', with a senior adviser to Iran's president on Thursday stating the country's forthcoming admission to the BRICS bloc as a triumph of diplomacy for the Islamic republic.

"Permanent membership in the group of global emerging economies is considered a historic development and a strategic success for the foreign policy of the Islamic republic," Mohammad Jamshidi wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Meanwhile, UAE President said: "We appreciate the approval of BRIC leaders for the UAE joining the group."

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said the decision by the BRICS group of nations to invite Ethiopia to join was "a great moment" and that his country wanted to cooperate for "an inclusive and prosperous global order".