Bangladesh wants to join BRICS

Bangladesh has formally applied to become a member of BRICS, an alliance of five countries.

The leaders of the alliance will attend the 15th BRICS summit to be held in South Africa from 22 to 24 August. It is said that there will be a discussion about taking new members.

The BRICS is a regional economic alliance of five countries. Originally BRICS was named after the initials of five member countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The BRICS was officially founded in 2009.

There were discussions about the inclusion of Bangladesh for the last couple of days. Foreign minister Abdul Momen talked about this several times.

According to a BSS report, while speaking to the newspersons in Geneva, Switzerland on 14 June, foreign minister said Bangladesh will become a member of the BRICS soon.

The issue was also raised in the meeting between prime minister Sheikh Hasina and South Africa president Cyril Ramaphosa at the bilateral meeting room in the Palais de Nations in Geneva.

South Africa is the leader of the alliance at the moment.  State minister for foreign affairs Shahriar Alam confirmed to Prothom Alo on Tuesday that Bangladesh has formally applied to become a member of BRICS.

Not only Bangladesh, a total of 20 countries have expressed their desire to join the BRICS. Several countries have already applied for BRICS membership. South Africa foreign minister Naledi Pandor said in April last year that so far 12 countries, including Algeria, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirate, Bahrain, Iran, Egypt, Argentina, Mexico, Indonesia, Cambodia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Nigeria, had applied officially for BRICS membership.

Although 20 countries want to become members, Saudi Arabia and Algeria’s move for BRICS membership has been discussed widely in the media. Both the countries produce oil. It is being assumed that these two countries will try to take an important role in fixing oil price and production after being the members of the BRICS.

A spokesperson of the China foreign ministry recently talked about Bangladesh’s official approach to be a member of the BRICS and discussed recruiting new members in the alliance.

News agency UNB reports, in response to a question from Russian state-owned domestic news agency RIA Novosti regarding Bangladesh’s approach for BRICS membership on Tuesday, China foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said, “As an important platform for cooperation among emerging markets and developing countries, BRICS is committed to upholding multilateralism, vigorously advancing the reform of the global governance system and increasing the representation and say of emerging markets and developing countries.”

“China is committed to advancing the BRICS expansion and stands ready to bring more like-minded partners into the big family of BRICS,” he added.

Mao Ning further said that the five members of the BRICS have reached a political consensus to expand the alliance. China is ready to welcome Bangladesh in the BRICS, he added.

Bangladesh has been showing interest for BRICS membership over the last few years. As part of this, the country became a member of the BRICS-bank on 2 September 2021. The official name of this bank is The New Development Bank (NDB), which was established by the BRICS members in 2015. The board of directors of the bank started the discussion on inclusion of new members in the bank. After several discussions in phases, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirate and Uruguay were included in the Bank.

The NDB started with a capital of US$ 50 billion. However, now the bank has an approved capital of US$ 100 billion.

According to the finance ministry, Bangladesh bought 1 per cent share of the bank to be a member of it. The bank so far has approved a total of 80 projects worth US$ 30 billion.

It is said in the international arena that the NDB was established to challenge the World Bank (WB). Besides, the BRICS officially supports a major reform of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Therefore, the inclusion of new members in the BRICS will further strengthen the demand for reform of the IMF and the WB.

Although the BRICS has only five members, their positions in the world economy are quite significant. Some 40 per cent of the world population live in these five countries. BRICS also occupies 31.5 per cent of the global GDP, where the GDP of G7, a forum of the seven richest countries of the world, has reduced to 30 per cent.

Although the Western countries imposed economic sanctions on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, the BRICS countries didn’t take part in it. Rather, trades between Russia and India and Russia and China increased after the invasion.

It is said that although BRICS slowed down a bit in between, it has revived in the existing geopolitical context. In all, it has appeared as a new challenge for the West. The alliance is expanding to convey this message.

At the beginning, it was an alliance of Brazil, Russia, India and China. Jim O'Neill, an economist of investment banking company Goldman Sachs introduced the concept. In a report published in November 2001, he said these four countries will dominate the world economy by 2050.

He showed several reasons behind his prediction, including the fast growing economy of these countries, cheap labour cost, favourable demography and abundance of natural resources in these countries.

South Africa joined the alliance in 2010. Jim O’Neill, however, didn’t mention anything about forming a political or economic forum.

The BRICS was actually an initiative of Russia. During the general assembly of the United Nations in 2006, Russia president Vladimir Putin first expressed his desire to form an alliance. On 20 September same year, the ministers of these five countries met over this. The first prime minister level summit of the alliance was held in 2008 in Russia. Later that year, Vladimir Putin held meetings with the head of the government of the other four countries of the alliance.

The first summit of the BRICS was held on 16 June, 2009 in Russia. The BRICS officially started from that summit. Bangladesh now wants to be a part of it.

Although BRICS is an economic forum, it is regarded as an anti-US alliance worldwide. China and Russia, two economic and political rivals of the USA, are active members of this alliance. The attempts to isolate Russia following the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war were not successful. The impact of the trade war between China and the USA is still on.

In the meantime, Bangladesh is in a different geopolitical situation. The USA has adopted a new visa policy for Bangladesh ahead of the general election. On the other hand China has openly supported Bangladesh. India, one of the biggest allies of Bangladesh, is also a member of the BRICS. The newspapers in India are writing about the country’s support towards Bangladesh. In this context, Bangladesh’s approach for BRICS membership will add another dimension in the geopolitics of the region.