RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The countries of the BRICS group of emerging economies will hold their annual summit this week in the face of a tense global scenario due to the war in Ukraine.
The event will bring together the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa virtually because of the pandemic and will have Argentina as a guest, which has already expressed its desire to join the group.
The bloc’s annual summit is aimed at “fostering a high-quality BRICS partnership and ushering in a new era for global development”.
Public health and vaccine cooperation are the areas prioritized by China, the bloc’s president.
However, the war in Ukraine, which has prompted attempts by the Global North to isolate Russia, is not on the agenda.
China formally asked the other BRICS members to consider expanding the group but without naming specific candidates.
The proposal was accepted, according to a joint communiqué from the entire bloc, in which the countries do not set deadlines and ask to review the necessary procedures before moving forward.
At the BRICS foreign ministers’ summit held in May, Argentina’s President Alberto Fernandez sent a letter in which he highlighted the group as a “cooperative alternative to a world order that has been working for the benefit of a few” and stressed that Argentina’s interests are aligned with those of the bloc.
Argentina’s accession would be the second time the bloc has added a new member since South Africa joined in 2010, following the summit held in Russia.
Other countries such as Indonesia have also been mentioned as possible new members, further expanding this group of emerging powers from the Global South.
“Argentina sees its future not in Old Europe or the North Atlantic, but in the New South, embodied in the BRICS, and whose core is in Asia-Pacific,” argued Jorge Heine, a researcher at Boston University, in a column for the Global Times of China.
THE POSSIBLE EXPANSION OF BRICS
Argentina’s interest is not new. Since 2015, first with former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and then with former President Mauricio Macri, the government has highlighted its desire to be part of the BRICS group.
Although no progress was made beyond declarations, specialists agree that the current scenario is different.
Esteban Actis, a researcher at the University of Rosario, said that because of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, it is likely that there will be a fragmentation of governance, with a lesser weight of spaces such as the G20.
Because of this, China’s desire to expand BRICS to make the bloc more robust and add new emerging countries appears.
“I was always quite skeptical about the possibility of Argentina joining, but the changes in the international scenario may make it possible for that to happen and for an enlargement,” he added.
“Added to this is the support of Brazil and the Bolsonaro government, previously reluctant to expand the bloc.”
Diplomatic sources told the state news agency Télam that the accession process would be “long” but that the government had already received unofficial communications of commitments from Brazil, China, and India.
Adding a new country to the BRICS requires the full consensus of all members, which makes it more complex.
BRICS was formed in 2009 as a forum for economic and trade cooperation among the world’s leading emerging economies at that time to counter the international financial and trade organizations led by Western countries, especially the United States.
The bloc positioned itself at the time as a powerful force in the global economy, with the potential to significantly change the current world order.
However, skepticism towards the bloc’s progress is widespread, even with its most enthusiastic supporters questioning the lack of progress in substantive policies.
For Julieta Zelicovich, Ph.D. in international relations, the bloc’s heterogeneity makes its enlargement difficult.
While China and Brazil may agree to join Argentina because of their interests in the country, that would not necessarily be the case with South Africa, India, or Russia, without clear incentives to expand the bloc, Zelicovich added.
IN SEARCH OF FINANCING
A perhaps simpler possibility for Argentina would be to join the BRICS bank, the so-called New Development Bank (NDB).
Accession can occur without necessarily being a BRICS member, as is the case of Uruguay, the United Arab Emirates, and Bangladesh, the most recent to join the NDB.
“The NDB would be an interesting space for Argentina and coincides with the government’s idea of participating in alternative financial organizations,” said Zelicovich.
Argentina is in the midst of an economic and sovereign debt crisis, with low monetary reserves in its Central Bank and limited access to sources of financing.
It has slowed down the expansion of its solar and wind energy parks, necessary for an energy transition, among other projects.
Brazil’s Minister of Economy, Paulo Guedes, said that he would promote Argentina as a candidate to join the NDB following a meeting in April with his Argentine counterpart Martín Guzmán.
For Guedes, Argentina’s accession would allow greater integration between the two economies, especially in energy and agriculture.
Since its creation in 2014, the NDB has approved nearly 80 projects in all its member countries, totaling US$30 billion.
Projects in transportation, water and sanitation, clean energy, digital infrastructure, social infrastructure, and urban development are within the bank’s scope.
Federico Vaccarezza, professor of International Economic Relations at Universidad Austral, argued that joining the NDB would mean a new financing avenue for Argentina, especially in energy infrastructure.
“Faced with a lack of dollars in the country, the NDB represents an opportunity,” he added.
Argentina joined the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), a development bank created in 2015 at the initiative of China, in 2020.
One of the original objectives of the AIIB was to support infrastructure construction under China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which Argentina formally joined this year when Fernandez visited Beijing.
With information from El Diario AR