BRICS summit gives IMF gang a run for its money

It’s going to be a busy, tense and challenge-laden International Monetary Fund gathering in Washington this week.

There, the economic glitterati will confront a bewildering number of hot-button issues ranging from China’s slowdown to Germany’s recession to geopolitical risks galore to a toss-up US election that’s testing nerves everywhere. Throw in the IMF’s warnings about a US$100 trillion public debt timebomb.

Amazingly, Washington could be hosting this week’s second most impactful economic gathering. The more tantalizing event will be in Moscow, where the BRICS nations are holding their annual summit.

Just a few years ago, many pundits figured the grouping roping together Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa was destined for sideshow status. In 2001, then-Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill coined the BRIC acronym. In 2010, the four original members added South Africa.

In the years since, the BRICS seemed to lose forward thrust. In a 2019 report, Standard & Poor’s said the bloc had lost relevance. Around that same time, O’Neill himself took some shots at his creation.

“The diverging long-term economic trajectory of the five countries weakens the analytical value of viewing the BRICS as a coherent economic grouping,” O’Neill wrote recently. “I myself have occasionally joked that perhaps I should have called the acronym ‘IC’ based on the clear disappointment of the Brazilian and Russian economies in the current decade since 2011, where both have clearly significantly under-performed compared with what the 2050 scenario path laid out.”

Yet the BRICS have since gotten some of their groove back and is expanding, adding five new members. This week, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will join