BRICS is an intergovernmental organisation, with their governments meeting annually at formal summits and coordinating multilateral policies.
BRICS is an acronym for the five countries that are current members:
- B = Brazil
- R = Russia
- I = India
- C = China
- S = South Africa
The group was formed in 2006, with just Brazil, Russia, India and China.
In 2002 it was initially grouped as “BRIC” (or “the BRICs”), before South Africa joined in 2010, when it became BRICS.
BRICS is not a free trade bloc, but members do co-ordinate on trade matters and have established a policy bank, the New Development Bank, (NDB) to coordinate infrastructure loans.
In 2021, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay and Bangladesh joined the BRICS bank.
In 2022 it was mentioned that the following countries were interested in joining the intergovernmental group.
- Saudi Arabia
- United Arab Emirates
- Egypt
- Algeria
- Argentina
- Mexico
- Nigeria
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