Russian President, Vladimir Putin, while speaking at the 2023 BRICS Business Forum, noted that the bloc of 5 (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) has grown in prominence and its goals now reflect the aspirations of most of the world’s community.
“The figures speak for themselves. Over the last decade, mutual investments among the BRICS countries have increased six-fold. Their overall investments in global economy have doubled, and their total exports have reached 20 percent of the world exports,” Putin said.
“I would also like to point out that the share of the BRICS countries, with their population totalling more than three billion people, now accounts for nearly 26 percent of the global GDP; our five countries are ahead of the G7 in terms of purchasing power parity (the forecast for 2023 is 31.5 percent against 30 percent).”
However, Putin reminded the audience that the west has erected most of the challenges that the world currently faces and that the BRICS community would have to maneuver around these to increase their economic integration and partnerships.
In particular, the Russian President pointed fingers at the west for the increasing inflationary pressures that have been witnessed globally:
These challenging and complex tasks need to be tackled against the backdrop of the increasing volatility in stock, currency, energy and food markets, coupled with substantial inflationary pressure stemming from, inter alia, the irresponsible large-scale money creation by a number of countries seeking to mitigate the effects of the pandemic, which has led to the accumulation of private and public debt.
Speaking on sanctions, Putin said:
The global economic situation is also seriously affected by the illegitimate sanctions practice and illegal freezing of assets of sovereign states, which essentially amounts to the trampling upon all the basic norms and rules of free trade and economic life – norms and rules that not so long ago seemed immutable.
Nonetheless, he noted the progress being made towards de-dollarization in the bloc saying that the share of U.S. dollars in export and import operations within BRICS is declining. In 2022, it stood at only 28.7 percent.
“Incidentally, during this summit, we will discuss in detail the entire range of issues related to the transition to national currencies in all areas of economic cooperation between our five nations. The BRICS New Development Bank, which has already become a credible alternative to existing Western development institutions, has a great role to play in these efforts.”
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