Platform key to improving economy, observers say

CAIRO — The BRICS is increasingly serving as a crucial platform that can lead a broad global development process, improve the current global economic system and address its problems and crises, global experts and senior officials have said.

"BRICS, with its economic, financial and technological capabilities and clear future vision, has the power and ability to lead the world toward a broad development process and make the global economic system more just and equitable," said Abdel-Sattar Eshrah, secretary-general of the Egyptian-Chinese Business Council in Cairo.

"The global economic system, with its crises and challenges, has negatively affected the lives of people worldwide, which highlights the importance of BRICS to restore a great deal of global economic stability," Eshrah said.

Eshrah, also a counselor of the Federation of Egyptian Chambers of Commerce, stressed that BRICS can help many emerging economies achieve higher rates of growth and development.

At the BRICS Summit last week, six countries, namely Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, were invited to join the BRICS.Their membership will take effect on Jan 1, 2024.

On Friday, Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi said BRICS has been formed to promote cooperation among countries to help them progress while respecting their independence. Raisi made the remarks upon arrival in Teheran from Johannesburg, where he took part in the BRICS Summit, according to a statement released by the president's office.

"The global hegemonic system "seeks to prevent independent states, including Iran, from growing through relations with other independent countries, Raisi said, adding that BRICS plays an effective role in promoting trade and economic cooperation among countries "in a major part of the world".

Multilateralism hailed

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said the group has a cooperation mechanism based on openness to inclusive multilateralism, according to the ministry's spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch.

In an op-ed published on Thursday in The National, a news outlet based in Abu Dhabi, Nickolay Mladenov, director-general of the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy, said the expansion of BRICS enhances global economic diplomacy and political reconciliation in a rapidly changing global landscape.

"The transition from a unipolar or bipolar world to a multipolar one has thrust middle powers into a pivotal role," said Mladenov, who served as a senior United Nations official and as Bulgaria's foreign minister and defense minister.

According to data released earlier this year from Acorn Macro Consulting, a British economic research company, the BRICS group accounts for 41 percent of the global population and accounts for 16 percent of world trade. The five BRICS countries now contribute about a quarter of global GDP.

Xinhua