Saudi Arabia is interested in joining the BRICS group of the world’s five major developing economies, as well the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, according to Russia's Ambassador to the kingdom, Sergey Kozlov.
The five BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – currently account for more than 40% of the world’s population and nearly a quarter of global GDP. Meanwhile, the China and Russia-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional security bloc, includes major powers like India in its ranks.
“As part of the diversification of the kingdom's foreign policy, Saudi Arabia is keen to join such international associations as the SCO and BRICS,” Kozlov said on Sunday in an interview with RIA Novosti.
According to the ambassador, the possibility of the Gulf nation’s membership in the SCO is being actively discussed, while the idea of joining BRICS is under consideration.
“In general, the willingness of [our] Saudi partners to become an integrated part of these multilateral organizations, primarily the SCO, seems to have a good prospect,” Kozlov said.
Earlier this year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that “more than a dozen” nations had expressed interest in entering the BRICS group.
Algeria, Argentina, and Iran have reportedly asked to join BRICS, while Bangladesh, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Uruguay are members of its New Development Bank. Argentina's potential accession is supported by China according to several sources.
Bahrain, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Egypt, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, Syria, Turkey, the UAE, Venezuela and Zimbabwe have also shown interest in becoming BRICS members.
In October 27, 2022, amidst the growing tension between the US and Saudi Arabia over the ongoing Ukraine-Russia war, the Gulf nation has conveyed its interest to join the BRICS Bloc. Last week, President Cyril Ramposa of South Africa during his visit to Riyadh announced that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman expressed the kingdom’s desire to join the BRICS. There are other countries like Turkey, Egypt among others who have expressed their interest to join the grouping, he told the media persons in that country.
The issue of expansion of the bloc of emerging economies will be on the agenda of the BRICS Summit scheduled to take place in South Africa under its presidency in 2023.
“The case of Saudi Arabia, however, is both curious and interesting. Saudi Arabia has traditionally been a close ally of the US in West Asia. But in the last few months, the relationship has undergone a roller-coaster ride. During his electoral campaign, President Biden projected Saudi Arabia as a pariah states due to Prince Salman’s alleged involvement in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post journalist. After coming to power, however, he changed his course and visited Saudi Arabia. This visit was intended to ensure the low price of oil to punish Russia,”
As reported earlier, South American nation Argentina’s President Alberto Fernandez had asked Chinese President Xi Jinping about joining the group. Iran too has sent in its request to join. Both countries have already applied for the membership of the bloc earlier this year in June. The other countries including Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt are set to formally apply for the membership of BRICS.
BRICS represents more than 40 percent of the global population and nearly a quarter of the world’s GDP and if it is expanded it will help in bolstering the BRICS bloc’s global influence. At the BRICS summit this year, according to reports quoting Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, many countries have expressed their interest to join the bloc of emerging markets. And stated that China actively supports the member countries to start the expansion process for BRICS Plus Cooperation. At the 14th summit this year the members talked about the procedure and the standards for the expansion.
The idea of linking under one bloc the major emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China first emerged in 2001, when Goldman Sachs coined the acronym BRICs to describe the potential of the four countries to become a powerful economic bloc in the world economy. In June 2009, Brazil, Russia, India, and China formally emerged as a global market force during the first BRIC summit held in Russia, with South Africa joining the bloc a year later.
In subsequent years, BRICS foreign ministers met to advance the bloc’s policy goals. The momentum to expand the bloc arrived in June 2017, when China proposed more inclusiveness. In September 2017, China proceeded to invite other nations to join the bloc through a “BRICS Plus” cooperation model at the BRICS Summit in Xiamen, and donated reserve funds to the new bloc through the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB), which was formed in July 2014.
The expansion of BRICS promises to substantially increase the bloc’s wealth, which currently contributes to 24% of the world’s total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) output – US$24.44 trillion in 2021 – while holding 16% of world trade and 29.3% of the world’s total land surface.
The five new members expected to join the bloc in 2023 are Argentina, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. BRICS Plus, a framework designed to include new countries in the BRICS dialogue with a view to promoting multilateralism and multiculturalism, also aims to integrate the Gulf region into its evolving global, regional and sub-regional economic structures. Consequently, members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain and Qatar – have embarked on a new era of ties with the BRICS countries, shaped by a desire to buffer their economies in a conflict-prone world.
This need to build alternative global economic, political, and security structures through a BRICS Plus-GCC partnership is expected to encourage collaboration in a host of sectors and promote geopolitical convergence.
Overview of BRICS–GCC relations
The GCC states enjoy a long history of engagement with BRICS countries since at least the global financial crisis of 2008. Before the crisis, the GCC states had benefitted from the prospect of better integration into global markets, aided by a surge in demand for their rich energy markets. Oil and gas windfalls led to budget surpluses that soared to 23% of regional GDP in 2006. Economic growth that had stagnated in previous years reached an estimated 7%, double the 3.5% average for 1990-2002, when the GCC region was relatively isolated from global markets except in the energy sector.
In an effort to rebound from the global financial crisis, the GCC states sought to expand their markets beyond the developed world. The GCC tilt toward new markets in the Global South may have served as an engine for economic growth. High energy outputs enabled the GCC outreach to BRICS in this period, especially to China when it launched the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative in 2013. Combined with a Silk Road fund of US$40 billion and additional funding from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the OBOR initiative ensured the BRICS economies’ energy dependency on the GCC.
The emerging China-GCC market-oriented security partnership expanded to secure stability in the Indian Ocean and in the Gulf waterway, by promising better economic prospects and smoother maritime connectivity to the emerging economies of Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The need for energy security through an evolving China-GCC partnership, along with the growing presence of BRICS countries in local GCC markets, pointed to a mutual desire to widen spheres of influence across continents, and an appetite for larger projects, multilateralism, innovation, private sector growth, and wealth generation.
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