Another BRIC in the wall

An investment bank economist first grouped the nations of Brazil, Russia, India and China together based on two shared characteristics: large populations and rapid economic growth. The so-called BRIC nations had little else in common -- they covered the full scale of democratization, with varying degrees of financial transparency and vastly different economies. Yet after Goldman Sachs' 2001 report that coined the acromym was released, the BRIC nations became inexorably linked, at least in the collective mind of the investment community.

Last week, the BRIC nations took their union out of the realm of analyst reports and formed a political alliance to challenge the dominance of the economic institutions created in the aftermath of WWII.

Brazil, Russia, India and China, the world’s biggest emerging market economies or the BRIC countries vowed to turn their four-way group into a powerful instrument for changing the world, affirming their global economic clout. On the last day of their meeting in Yekaterinburg, in the Ural mountains, the BRIC countries institutionalised BRIC, agreeing to hold regular meetings at the level of Foreign Ministers.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said BRIC would work to “support global stability and ensure uninterrupted and manageable global development.”

Speaking at a joint press conference later, Mr. Lavrov said it was only natural that the BRIC grouping had taken shape. “We are the world’s fastest growing economies, we have many common interests in the globalised world and share many views on how to build a more democratic, fair and stable world.”

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee hailed BRIC as a “unique combination of mutually complementary economies” and platform to promote energy and food security, fight terrorism and reform global political and financial bodies.

The four BRIC countries, which account for more than one tenth of the world’s gross domestic product, said they would boost cooperation on a range of fronts and work on ways to ease the burden of soaring global food prices.