BRICS- 13th BRICS Summit 2021

Context

• Recently, the National Security Advisor of India chaired a meeting of the NSAs of the BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) countries.
• In this BRICS meeting, India raised the issue of cross-border terrorism and activities of groups such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed which enjoy State support and threaten peace and security.

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About BRICS Grouping  

• BRICS is an acronym for the grouping of the world’s leading emerging economies, namely Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
• Background: In 2001, Goldman Sachs’ Jim O’Neill authored a paper called “Building Better Global Economic BRICs”, pointing out that future GDP growth in the world would come from China, India, Russia, and Brazil.
  • Though the paper did not recommend any formal grouping, it said that BRIC economies combined would outstrip the western dominated world order before 2039.
• BRICS Formation: In 2006, leaders of the BRIC countries met on the margins of a G-8 (now called G-7) summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, and BRIC was formalized that year.
  • Shortly afterward, in September 2006, the group was formalized as BRIC during the 1st BRIC Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, which met on the sidelines of the General Debate of the UN Assembly in New York City.
  • First formal summit: took place in 2009 in the Russian Federation and focused on issues such as reform of the global financial architecture.
  • South Africa was invited to join BRIC in December 2010, after which the group adopted the acronym BRICS.
  • South Africa subsequently attended the Third BRICS Summit in Sanya, China, in 2011.
• BRICS Headquarters: BRICS doesn’t have any headquarter rather all the countries of BRICS have offices dedicated to BRICS in their own nation.
• BRICS Structure: BRICS does not exist in the form of organization, but it is an annual summit between the supreme leaders of five nations.
• BRICS Presidency: The Chairmanship of the forum is rotated annually among the members, in accordance with the acronym B-R-I-C-S.
  • India has assumed the BRICS Presidency from January 2021.

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Significance of the BRICS grouping

• The population of BRICS nations represents 41% of the world’s population with 3.14 billion people.
• The combined BRICS economy constitutes 24% of global GDP and 16% of world trade.
• BRICS countries’ land area constitutes the total combined area of 3% of the total land surface of the world.

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13^th BRICS Summit

• Host: India will host the 13^th BRICS Summit 2021. This would be the third time as, previously, India had successfully hosted the BRICS summit in 2012 and 2016.
• BRICS is also celebrating its 15^th anniversary at this year’s summit.
• Theme: The theme of the 13th BRICS summit 2021 is ‘BRICS @ 15: Intra-BRICS Cooperation for Continuity, Consolidation, and Consensus’.
• The location/venue of the summit is not yet decided as it is not clear whether it will be hosted virtually or physically due to the covid-19 impact.

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