BRICS have admitted Algeria, Nigeria and Uganda as partner countries along with other 12 nations. But these nations are not the full members of the group yet.
Russia hosted the 16th BRICS Summit and the first-ever BRICS outreach/BRICS plus summit meeting at Kazan. The summit was observed from October 22 to 24, 2024.
As per the reports, Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted the meeting which was attended by the bloc’s leaders of its member countries.
BRICS countries have agreed to include total 13 nations in the category of partner states. However, entry of these countries was not officially conducted during the summit.
The Russian presidency hold the consultations with the partner countries to make membership of the BRICS official. This was earlier confirmed by Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov.
Group of countries which are invited to join the BRICS as partner states, include Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda and Vietnam.
According to diplomatic sources, from the Brazilian delegation in Kazan, which was heard by Brasil de Fato, Venezuela is the only country that was left off the list due to Brazil’s veto, which was later presented during the preliminary negotiations of the summit.
Notably, Brazil will host the next 17th BRICS Summit meeting, next year in 2025.
BRICS
BRICS as an acronym represent Brazil, Rusia, India, China and South Africa, along with the recent additions i.e. Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.
Referring to the history, for 2021, economist for the investment bank Goldman Sachs – Jim O’Neil has created the acronym ‘BRIC’ which stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China.
O’Neil mentioned that the large and middle-income countries were the fast-growing economies for that time. He said, “I’m predicting these countries to become the world leading economies by 2050.”
Considering this, in the year 2006, the four countries decided to join together as the BRIC group. Later, South Africa joined in 2010, adding ‘S’ to the acronym and made it ‘BRICS’ group.
BRICS members v/s BRICS partners
It is very important to differentiate and know the difference between the BRICS members and the BRICS partners. The official BRICS members possess voting rights in bloc affairs with full participation in summits and meetings, complete commitment and representation of the bloc.
Whereas BRICS partners are only allowed for selective engagement and participation in BRICS affairs. These partners remain participants in other international initiatives without full commitment to BRICS.
The new BRICS partners have the advantage of becoming full members in the future. Additionally, they are not being inducted right away for certain reasons, which are only known to the bloc.