New accessions to BRICS bespeak its growing power: Iran
Iran’s acting Foreign Minister Ali Baqeri Kani said joining of new members to the BRICS group of countries is a clear sign of its growing power in the world.
“BRICS has the largest population, the largest economy and the largest territory on the planet. Therefore, it should be the voice of the majority of the world’s people who prefer a more democratic and multilateral world over the current chaotic one,” Baqeri Kani told a BRICS ministerial meeting in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod on Monday.
BRICS has now turned into a successful model of “new cooperation” and “coalition of fast-growing economies” and has shown that it has a plan, initiative and multifaceted programs to reform global governance and play a greater role in the world, the Iranian official added.
He said that the reform of the international financial system based on the Bretton Woods should be the BRICS’s priority as the international monetary system, Bretton Woods, has always acted as an obstacle for the progress of independent and developing countries.
Referring to the US abuse of countries’ dependence on the dollar as a weapon, Baqeri Kani said that the BRICS member states should expedite measures to tap further into their national currencies instead of the dollar in trade, use cryptocurrencies and establish new financial-banking structures, etc.
The summit kicked off on Monday, with the participants observing a minute’s silence in memory of the late Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who lost their lives in a tragic helicopter accident last month.
The BRICS group of fast-developing economies initially consisted of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
This year, the group was expanded to include Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Ethiopia as new members.
The bloc, which is often seen as an alternative to the Western economic and political hegemony, comprises almost 46 percent of the global population, 36 percent of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) and 25 percent of the global trade measured in terms of exports.
Upon his arrival in Russia, Iran’s acting foreign minister told reporters that, “BRICS is the biggest international economic and trade organization that operates outside the framework of Western unilateralism.”
“The presence of the Islamic Republic of Iran in this organization is indicative of the position and importance of our country in the multilateral [world] system,” he added.