BRICS must go for a 'Rio Consensus'

Conveniently scheduled at the end of the World Cup, the sixth BRICS summit presents the leaders of five emerging economies a truly historic opportunity, not least because it is likely to see the establishment of a new development bank and reserve currency pool arrangement.

This move could strike a true trifecta - recharge global economic governance and the prospects for development, as well as pressure the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to get back on the right track.

The two Bretton Woods institutions, both headquartered in Washington, originally and with good reason put financial stability, employment and development as their core missions. That focus, however, became derailed in the last quarter of the 20th century. During the 1980s and 1990s, the World Bank and the IMF pushed the "Washington Consensus", which offered countries financing but conditioned it on a doctrine of deregulation.