The BRICS coalition is set to contribute a large share in the global economic growth over the next years, due to its “considerable size and relatively high pace of growth” compared to the developed Western countries, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday.
Putin’s endeavor is to establish BRICS-which recently welcomed Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates to its ranks of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa-as a firm counterbalance to Western influence in world politics and trade.
Kremlin chief Putin will host a BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, on October 22-24.
The countries under our association are, in fact, the locomotives of the world economic development. In the next few years, BRICS will account for the lion’s share of the global GDP gain,” Putin said to representatives and business leaders at a BRICS business forum held in Moscow.
“The economic growth of the BRICS countries will depend less and less on factors outside of their control or on external interference of any kind. This is what genuine economic sovereignty means,” he added.
Moscow is presenting the forthcoming summit as evidence that Western efforts to ostracize it over its behavior in Ukraine have fallen flat.
Russia is looking for cooperation with other countries in order to reshape the international financial architecture and reduce the dominance of the U.S. dollar.
Leaders of China, India, and the UAE announced their participation in the Kazan summit on Friday.
“The doors are open; we’re not shutting anyone out,” Putin said to BRICS reporters.
He also referred to a number of programs that Russia has put forward ahead of the summit, such as a collective cross-border payment mechanism and a reinsurance firm.
Putin cited a couple initiatives which Russia has in advance of the summit had presented, among them a joint cross-border payments system and the formation of a reinsurance company.
He stated that member states were developing a SWIFT-like financial messaging system resistant to Western sanctions, and were exploring the use of national digital currencies to finance investment projects with great growth potential within and beyond BRICS.
He pointed out that Russia’s financial proposals to the summit were focused on expanded use of national currencies, while it is “premature to take the process of creating a unified currency for the BRICS a step further.”
He also urged the New Development Bank the only now fully functioning multilateral development institution for BRICS to invest in technological and infrastructure projects in the Global South.
“As an institution of development, the bank already serves as an alternative to many Western financial systems, and we will of course further develop its potential,” Putin said. He also called for more investments in the fields of e-commerce and artificial intelligence.
Putin also seized the opportunity to try to pitch Russia’s most ambitious transport megaprojects: the Arctic Sea Route and the North to South corridor a route that links Russia to the Gulf and Indian Ocean through the Caspian Sea and Iran.
It is the most important impulse for increasing freight transport between Eurasian and African continents,” he said.
