Johannesburg – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, UAE, Ethiopia and Argentina to become permanent members in BRICS, will be full members of BRICS with effect from 1 January 2024. Earlier sources close to the matter told Daily News Egypt.
The 15th BRICS Summit is being held in South Africa’s Johannesburg from 22-24 August.
BRICS has become increasingly influential in recent years, as its members have emerged as major players in the global economy. The bloc’s combined GDP is now larger than that of the G7 according to the IMF estimates, and its population makes up nearly half of the world’s total.
This growing influence has led to increased interest in bloc’s membership. So far, 22 countries have formally applied to join the group.
At the second day of the summit, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that India would welcome moving forward with consensus on the expansion. Russia and China are championing the expansion, with South Africa also in support.
In March, Egypt took an equity position within the The New Development Bank (NDB) of the BRICS group. Previous equity was divided equally among the initial members: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
The New Development Bank was set up by BRICS nations on the basis of the intergovernmental agreement signed at the sixth summit in Fortaleza in July 2014.
As per data released earlier this year from Acorn Macro Consulting, a British economic research firm, the BRICS group makes up 41% of the global population and accounts for 16% of world trade. The five countries now contribute about a quarter of the global GDP.
