Comment on the 2013 BRICS summit first published in BRICSPOST March 23, 2013, 6:29 am
Discussions at the upcoming BRICS summit are expected to focus on creating a BRICS development bank, an initiative first mooted at the New Delhi summit last year. If successful, it will not only be the BRICS’s first major collaborative initiative, but would also give ‘an institutional underpinning’ to the group according to a recent report by South Africa’s Standard Bank.
Notwithstanding the expectation of the same report that the bank is not a ‘counterweight’ to the US-dominated Bretton Woods institutions but an ‘auxiliary funding institution’, the BRICS bank will constitute a major step forward in the process of constructing international economic and monetary institutions and kindred bi- and multi-lateral trade and financial arrangements that steer clear of the US dollar, US financial institutions as well as the Bretton Woods institutions. However, these arrangements involved parties with common and complementary interests. The BRICS group is another matter altogether.