BRICS Expansion Still Work In Progress: EAM Jaishankar

Johannesburg
Expansion of the BRICS bloc is still a work in progress and members of the five-nation grouping are approaching the idea with a positive intent and an open mind, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said. Speaking after a meeting of the foreign ministers of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) nations in Cape Town on Thursday evening, Jaishankar said the leaders of the countries had asked them last year to formulate the guiding principles, standards, criteria and the procedures for such admissions.
The BRICS+ meeting that will be part of the summit would be quite large, as the various African countries and chairs of various regional community bodies in different regions of the world would also be invited to attend, Pandor added. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said it was not surprising that so many countries wanted to join BRICS because of what it stood for.
BRICS symbolises the multipolar world, and the attraction of more than a dozen countries to BRICS is a testimony to that, he said.
Among the countries reportedly seeking membership of the BRICS bloc are Egypt and the Middle Eastern oil-producing nations of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. South American countries seeking its membership include Venezuela and Argentina. The BRICS bloc brings together five of the largest developing countries of the world, representing 41 per cent of the global population, 24 per cent of the global GDP and 16 per cent of the global trade.