The expanded BRICS grouping — now BRICS+ with 10 full member nations including the original Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa alongside the new members UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran and Ethiopia admitted in 2024 — has evolved into a genuine alternative economic and diplomatic forum that is reshaping global trade and financial architecture in ways that were difficult to predict even five years ago. The BRICS+ bloc collectively represents 45% of global population, 36% of global GDP (at purchasing power parity), 46% of global oil production and a growing share of global manufacturing, financial reserves and commodity trade — a combination of economic weight that is increasingly being translated into practical institutional arrangements that challenge the Western-dominated Bretton Woods financial system and US dollar hegemony.
The most consequential development from the BRICS+ expansion has been the acceleration of discussions around a BRICS currency or payment system that would reduce dependence on the US dollar for trade settlement among member countries. While a formal BRICS currency remains distant given the political complexities of monetary sovereignty, the BRICS's mBridge project — a multi-currency settlement platform developed in collaboration with central banks of the UAE, China, Hong Kong and Thailand — has conducted live transactions and demonstrated technical feasibility. India has been cautiously supportive of alternatives to SWIFT for bilateral trade settlement, having already faced situations where US-Iran sanctions created complications for India's pre-existing energy trade with Iran, but has maintained that it supports financial system reform through multilateral dialogue rather than aggressively undermining existing institutions.
India's role within BRICS+ has been nuanced and occasionally uncomfortable, given its simultaneous deepening of strategic partnerships with the United States through QUAD, defence technology sharing and the iCET framework. India has consistently maintained that its BRICS membership reflects a commitment to multipolarity and the reform of global governance institutions to give developing countries more voice — not an alignment against the West. The India-China relationship, which is the most complex bilateral dynamic within BRICS, has seen gradual stabilisation at the Line of Actual Control following the disengagement agreements of 2022-2023, but deep strategic mistrust persists and prevents the kind of genuine economic integration within BRICS that would be possible if India-China relations were truly normalised.
For India's trade relationships, the BRICS+ expansion opens new commercial avenues with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt — all of which have strong economic relationships with India but which are now engaging with India through the additional framework of BRICS+ coordination alongside the existing bilateral tracks. The India-UAE Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), already operational, is the template for the kind of trade facilitation that India is seeking to replicate with Saudi Arabia. The UAE's role as both an BRICS+ member and a key US partner makes it an interesting bridge between the two geopolitical camps that both India and the UAE navigate simultaneously. India has consistently advocated within BRICS+ for focussing on developmental priorities — multilateral development bank reform, global health architecture, climate finance and trade facilitation — rather than the geopolitical anti-Western positioning that Russia and China sometimes push for within the bloc.
The BRICS New Development Bank (NDB), headquartered in Shanghai and now led by Indian former Finance Secretary KV Kamath, has grown its loan portfolio to $34 billion across infrastructure, sustainable development and climate projects in member countries — comparable in scale to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) though still a fraction of the World Bank's $100+ billion annual commitments. India is the second-largest borrower from NDB after China, with significant railway, highways and urban infrastructure projects financed through NDB concessional loans. The bank's ability to lend in local currencies — reducing foreign exchange risk for borrowers — and its streamlined environmental and social safeguard processes compared to the World Bank are genuine competitive advantages that have made it attractive for emerging market borrowers who find the World Bank's conditionalities and approval processes cumbersome. The NDB's expansion to include new members including Bangladesh, Egypt and UAE brings both additional capital from wealthy members and additional loan demand from new borrowers, positioning it for continued growth as an alternative multilateral development bank for the 21st century.
