BRICS must implement what it proposes

BRICS turned 20 this year, celebrating its 18th Leaders’ Summit in Delhi on 12-13 September 2026. Twenty years is a significant milestone. BRICS stakeholders will be heartened by the group’s ability to persevere, if not prosper, despite numerous odds.

This year was exceptionally challenging for BRICS. The last summit in Rio in 2025 took place against the backdrop of global trade being tossed into a sea of turbulence after the US unilaterally imposed reciprocal tariffs. Most BRICS members struggled to work out bilateral deals with the US by trading specific market access concessions demanded by the US for lower tariffs. Almost all the original BRICS members — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — faced pressure to manage their ties with the US, primarily over trade but also on geopolitical issues.

While US reciprocal tariffs were no longer the immediate concern this year, following their being struck down by the US Supreme Court, other potential US trade actions remained a worry. These included tariff threats against countries deemed to be lagging in efforts to curb imports made with forced labour, measures targeting the transshipment of goods through third countries to evade tariffs that would apply to exports from their country of origin, and trade action that could be legitimised by the passage of the Sanctioning Russia Act of 2026 by the US Senate. These pressures added to the complications arising from the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, with the war in Iran further aggravating the situation.

The Iran war that broke out in late February this year has had a significant impact on BRICS members. Apart from heavily increasing energy prices and exacerbating domestic inflation, it has split ranks among the BRICS.

With Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) drawn into military hostilities with Iran, BRICS was not just grappling with the price shocks of the Iran war but also its discordant effects from within. Given the fissures within the bloc and the precarious external conditions, the BRICS could have hardly convened at a more difficult time. 

Reaching for low-hanging fruit

Given the exceptionally challenging backdrop, it is commendable that the bloc could deliver a declaration by consensus. This by itself is no mean feat. India’s role in this regard as the BRICS chair was instrumental.

The situation was a throwback to the G20 summit held in Delhi almost exactly three years ago on 9-10 September 2023. Then too, the issue of a communique by the bloc had appeared impossible given the division within the group on the war in Ukraine. However, India was able to deftly steer the summit to yield a unanimously agreed communique. The outcome was similar this year too.

The BRICS New Delhi Declaration — Building for Resilience, Innovation. Cooperation and Sustainability — is an elaborate and exhaustive illustration of the concerns and aspirations of the Global South. It emphasises the urgency for developing countries, including BRICS members, to play bigger roles in global affairs through the United Nations (UN), and calls for multilateral reforms, including in the UN Security Council.

The emphasis echoes calls to reform quotas and shareholding at the Bretton Woods institutions — the IMF and World Bank — as well as the WTO. It is ironic that even within BRICS, China, India and South Africa have historically held contrasting positions at the WTO, including on global e-commerce and investment facilitation. Reforming the WTO in the face of such differences therefore appears distinctly ambitious.

A large part of the declaration is devoted to collaboration among BRICS members on medical products and digital healthcare services, along with efforts to strengthen cooperation among national regulatory authorities. This extends to closer collaboration between national public health institutes, as well as in traditional medicine, mental health and health infrastructure. The intention and emphasis are welcome and much needed.

Collaboration on health within the BRICS is a win-win outcome in several respects. Access to medicine, including vaccines; better healthcare; and medical standardisation are priorities for all BRICS members, while working on health is politically non-controversial. This can be treated as a low-hanging fruit and can position the BRICS firmly as a group ready to deliver on the human needs of a bloc covering around half of the global population. Similar benign objectives can be achieved through the pursuit of bloc-specific food security through initiatives like the BRICS grain exchange. 

BRICS’s handicap

Despite an exhaustive wish list, the BRICS unfortunately cannot overcome a core handicap that affects its credibility. It must begin implementing what it has proposed. The overarching and justified desire of the BRICS is to become an indispensable part of the global rule-making process. For that to materialise, the BRICS must signal its capability to make rules. 

There are many areas in the Delhi Declaration where the BRICS can begin making rules. Smart electricity grids and strong critical mineral supply chains are among these, as are submarine cable infrastructure and digital connectivity. Unless rules emerge in these areas, the concept of cooperation within the BRICS will remain more of aspirations, rather than achievements. There will always be doubts over whether internal frictions and distinctly heterogeneous institutional capabilities are systemic weaknesses affecting the bloc’s ability to make a difference to the prospects of its members.

Such doubts are strengthened by the lack of progress on major BRICS pronouncements from the past: establishing food reserves; working on an interoperable bloc-specific currency; and pushing more intra-bloc trade. None of these is anywhere close to seeing the light of day. 

Perhaps the BRICS might wish to focus on easier deliverables to secure greater credibility. The medical and health agenda of the Delhi Declaration could be an easy way forward in this regard. Without implementation though, the BRICS is at risk of losing its appeal and significance. 

(The author is Senior Research Fellow and Research Lead (trade and economics) in the Institute of South Asian Studies in the National University of Singapore. Views are personal.)

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