BRICS at 20: Why the New Delhi Summit matters to the Global South
Heads of state and government from 11 countries and an expanding group of partner nations will come together at Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi on September 12 and 13 for the 18th BRICS Summit. The Summit coincides with the 20th anniversary of the official inception of the club as a gathering of foreign ministers, comes at a time of new US tariff threats and a fragile India-China thaw, and is taking place at the same time and in the same city as another meeting of sovereign investors with a combined portfolio of USD 1 trillion. Few previous chairs, if any, have had to manage so many competing storylines. But is the reality on the ground limited to these storylines, or is there a real impact?
BRICS and the trillion-dollar question
That trillion-dollar event is worth thinking about, as it is what first drew the spotlight to this summit. It will be the first iBRICS Summit convened by the sovereign wealth funds body, the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, where sovereign wealth funds, pension funds and family offices will discuss cross-border investment, non-dollar settlement corridors and interoperability between payment platforms such as India’s UPI and Brazil’s Pix. On September 12, a ‘Sovereign Capital Compact’ is expected to be signed, but organisers have not revealed the precise monetary amounts or the projects into which the investments will be channelled.
The justification put forward by the event's organisers was understandable: tariffs and sanctions are squeezing traditional financial flows, and big pools of capital are looking for alternatives to move funds internationally. That one admission speaks volumes about where institutional capital thinks the world is going, more than any communiqué ever will.
That one admission speaks volumes about where institutional capital thinks the world is going, more than any communiqué ever will. The bloc that revolves around that capital is not the bloc that Goldman Sachs conceived of in 2001 as four fast-growing economies. Since 2024, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Indonesia have all been added to the original five, and about a dozen other nations now have ‘partner country’ status.
The bloc that revolves around that capital is not the bloc that Goldman Sachs conceived of in 2001 as four fast-growing economies. Since 2024, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Indonesia have all been added to the original five, and about a dozen other nations now have ‘partner country’ status. The two groups combined represent nearly half of the world's population and about 40 per cent of global GDP in purchasing-power terms—figures Indian officials will repeatedly cite this week.
What is discussed less often is that this scale has come at a price in terms of coherence. Iran and the Gulf monarchies sit uneasily at the same table; China has been pressing for membership to be expanded to a long list of applicant countries, while India has indicated that it seeks more robust and clearly defined membership criteria. A grouping of this size was always going to find it more difficult to negotiate as coherently as a bloc of five.
The Summit for the Global South – challenging American hegemony
Perhaps nothing on the formal agenda will be as widely discussed in India as one particular aspect of the summit. President Xi Jinping will visit Delhi with around 400 officials, more than double the number who accompanied him during his 2019 visit (though this has yet to be confirmed by Beijing). This will be his first trip to India since that year and his first since the deadly Galwan Valley clashes of 2020, which put the relationship on ice for five years.
But both capitals apparently believe there is value in a calibrated thaw, as evidenced by the recent visit of National Security Adviser Ajit Doval to Beijing and Prime Minister Modi’s visit last year to Tianjin for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit. Meanwhile, a reported border skirmish this summer is a reminder of how quickly the mood can sour. Modi may find it tougher to host Xi warmly without giving an inch on the border challenge before a domestic audience that has not forgotten 2020 than to deal with anything on the summit’s printed programme.
But the other capital India has to deal with from afar is Washington. Donald Trump has, on several occasions since early 2025, said that if the bloc takes a step towards a joint currency, it will face tariffs of up to 100 per cent. India has always said that a common currency for the BRICS group is not something it is interested in and that it will continue with the quiet expansion of trade settlement in local currencies. Both External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and the Reserve Bank of India have said as much on record, well aware that Indian exports already face their own tariff pressures from the US over India’s purchases of Russian oil. It is a very fine needle to thread: enough monetary diversification to reduce sanctions risk, but not so much as to risk confrontation.
Behind the rhetoric, what the summit is actually likely to produce is more about infrastructure than revolution. The New Development Bank, which is now a true multilateral lender with a lending book of well over a hundred approved projects and somewhere between USD 30 billion and USD 40 billion disbursed since 2016, is moving towards increasing the local-currency share of its lending book from around a quarter to nearly a third this year and has just welcomed Uzbekistan as a new member. That is important not just for BRICS membership per se: Pakistan, which has been denied full admission to BRICS amid regional political tensions, has been seeking admission to the NDB separately, simply to have an alternative source of financing away from the IMF. Discussions on the interoperability of fast-payment systems and CBDCs are likely to result in pilot announcements rather than a complete network, and India will once again push its longstanding demands for reform of the UN Security Council and the IMF—demands it has been making for years without securing any structural changes.
Behind the rhetoric, what the summit is actually likely to produce is more about infrastructure than revolution. The New Development Bank, which is now a true multilateral lender with a lending book of well over a hundred approved projects and somewhere between USD 30 billion and USD 40 billion disbursed since 2016, is moving towards increasing the local-currency share of its lending book from around a quarter to nearly a third this year.
Final words
In the broader developing world, it is time to be honest, but not cynical. The NDB's expanding loan book represents real, competitive and, for the most part, condition-free financing that African, Latin American and Asian borrowers lacked 15 years ago, and its very existence has arguably helped make financing available on softer terms from Western lenders. Debt relief, climate finance, and food and fuel security—all commitments that a parallel ‘People's BRICS’ civil-society gathering said the official process is under-delivering on—remain more promise than programme. The true power of BRICS lies not in any one declaration in Delhi, but in the mundane process of establishing payment networks, development finance and diplomatic leverage, which gradually diminishes the reliance of smaller states on the institutions or benevolence of any single power. That is work that will transcend this week’s headlines, whatever happens with Xi's plane and whatever the sovereign funds decide to sign. BRICS at 20 is more than just the headlines; it is a voice for the Global South and, indeed, for an emerging India.
Vesselin Popovski is a professor and vice dean at Jindal Global Law School, India and previously served at the United Nations University, Tokyo.
Pawan Kumar teaches at Amity Law School, Noida, and am an honorary professor at the International Institute of Justice and Police Sciences, Bengaluru, India.
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