12th BRICS summit was  hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Addressing the , Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that terrorism is the biggest problem the world is facing today and there is a need to ensure that countries that shelter terrorists must also be blamed; India made a strong pitch for reforms of UN Security Council and global organization’s like IMF  and WTO.

            LEARNING FROM HOME/ WITHOUT CLASSES/ BASICS

The BRIC [Brazil, Russia, India and China] idea was first conceived in 2001 by Goldman Sachs as part of an economic modelling exercise to forecast global economic trends over the next half century. BRICS is an acronym for an association of five major emerging national economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. BRIC Foreign Ministers at their meeting in New York on 21st September 2010 agreed that South Africa may be invited to join BRIC. Accordingly, South Africa was invite to attend the 3rd BRICS Summit in Sanya on 14 April 2011.

           The BRICS members are all developing or newly industrialized countries, but they are distinguished by their large, fast-growing economies and significant influence on regional and global affairs; all five are G-20 members.

Brics brings together five major emerging economies comprising 41 per  The last summit was hosted by Brazil in November 2019. The next summit will be hosted by India. So far India has hosted the summit twice – in 2012 and 2016.

The New Development Bank (NDB), formed by the BRICS group of emerging nations, has disbursed $1 billion assistance loan to India to help it contain the spread of Covid-19. The Bank plans to give out $15 billion to member nation to combat the pandemic. 

 The seventh summit coincided with the entry into force of constituting agreements of the New Development Bank and the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement and during the summit inaugural meetings of the NDB were held, and it was announced it would be lending in local currency; and open up membership to non-BRICS countries in the coming months.

                                                                           The New Development Bank (NDB), formerly referred to as the BRICS Development Bank, is a multilateral development bank operated by the BRICS states (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) as an alternative to the existing American and European-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The goal of the bank is to “mobilize resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in BRICS and other emerging economies and developing countries”. The bank is headquartered in Shanghai, China. Each participant country holds an equal number of shares and equal voting rights, and none of the countries will have veto power.

The BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) is a framework for the provision of support through liquidity and precautionary instruments in response to actual or potential short-term balance of payments pressures. It was established in 2015 by the BRICS countries Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The objective of this reserve is to provide protection against global liquidity pressures. This includes currency issues where members’ national currencies are being adversely affected by global financial pressures. The CRA is generally seen as a competitor to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and along with the New Development Bank is viewed as an example of increasing South-South cooperation.