Ten years on, BRICS looks more like ‘China & Co.’

This week, the heads of state of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa are gathered in Brasília for the annual BRICS summit, with meetings scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday before the publication of a joint declaration at the end of the week.

While this week’s event has flown largely under the global radar, the BRICS were once heralded as the future of the world’s economy. But the five member nations have grown unequally, with China becoming a global superpower and the remaining quartet sputtering along modestly.

This Forbes story from 2017 shows how dependant Russia, Brazil, India, and South Africa have become on China. In general terms, the Chinese buy Brazilian and South African commodities — which has become even more critical for Brazil in the wake of the economic downturn — while exports to India have grown exponentially. For Russia, China is also a strategic ally amid quarrels with the U.S. and European Union. 

An egalitarian bank?

It is surprising that such a move happened within a bloc that tried to change power imbalances between developed and non-developed countries. Its most notable initiative towards this goal was the New Development Bank (NDB), a pioneering project founded in 2015 that aimed to diminish the infrastructure gap in emerging markets — a deficit estimated at between USD 1 to 1.5 trillion per year, according to the Brazilian Institute of Applied Economic Research (Ipea). 

The bank also has a huge concern towards supporting green initiatives and, in the future, creating credit opportunities for emerging markets by offering loans with cheaper rates and long repayment deadlines. 

It began as an egalitarian initiative, with each founding member owning 20 percent of its shares and promising to invest 20 percent of the USD 10 billion in paid-in capital until 2022. The bank also has a subscribed capital of USD 50 billion, an amount that is set to increase gradually until reaching USD 100 billion. Also, no member has veto powers; all nations share the same status and appoint the chair in a rotating presidency model.  

Observers quote the...