BRICS is the acronym coined to associate five major emerging economies Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
The BRICS members are known for their significant influence on regional affairs.
Since 2009, the governments of the BRICS states have met annually at formal summits.
Russia hosted the most recent 12th BRICS summit on 17 November 2020 virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Originally the first four were grouped as BRIC (or “the BRICs”) before the induction of South Africa in 2010.
The BRICS have a
- combined area of 39,746,220 km2
- total population of about 3.21 billion
- 26.656% of the world land surface and
- 41.53% of the world population.
Four out of five members are among the world’s ten largest countries by population and by area , except for South Africa, the twenty-fourth in both.
Bilateral relations among BRICS states are conducted mainly based on
- non-interference ,
- equality , and
- mutual benefit
But There are multiple economic, territorial, and political disputes between the five governments.
New Development Bank :
The New Development Bank (NDB), formally referred to as the BRICS Development Bank, is a multilateral Development Bank operated by the five BRICS states . The bank’s primary focus of lending will be infrastructure projects with authorized lending of up to $34 billion annually.
South Africa will be the African Headquarters of the Bank named the “New Development Bank Africa Regional Centre.”
The bank will have starting capital of $50 billion, with wealth increased to $100 billion over time.
Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa will initially contribute $10 billion each to bring the total to $50 billion.
It has so far 53 projects under way worth around $15 billion.
Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRICS
Source : wikipedia , The hindu, pib, the indian express, google, lstv, rstv etc
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