The conference of BRICS finance ministers and central bank governors met Oct. 10-11. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov reported there, according to RT, that the combined GDP by purchasing power parity of the BRICS members is growing as a share of global GDP and has reached 36.7% of the world total in such data. RT’s report said: “The officials were meeting in Moscow to discuss possible improvements to the international monetary and financial system ahead of the BRICS 2024 summit in Kazan [on Oct. 22-24].... Russia is the current chair of BRICS.” Siluanov said that the BRICS nations’ rate of GDP growth was 4.4% in 2023, and that of the G7 nations was 1.7%. “The BRICS is the engine of global economic growth.”
“The IMF and the World Bank are not performing their roles,” Siluanov is quoted from the Oct. 10 session. “They are not working in the interests of BRICS countries.” He added that it is necessary to form “new conditions or even new institutions, similar to the Bretton Woods institutions, but within the framework of our community, within the framework of BRICS.”
Russia’s report released in English for this conference is: “BRICS Chairmanship Research: Improvement of the International Monetary and Financial System,” by the Finance Ministry, the Central Bank, and Yakov Consulting Group (Moscow). It says that a payments system could be protected from sanctions and seizures by “putting central banks in the middle of transactions”; creating or using BRICS exchanges for trade in key commodities including gold, oil, wheat, strategic metals; making payments among the BRICS central banks, when they accept credits and settlements from each other, in tokens (distributed ledger digital currencies). Presumably the central banks will make equivalent national currencies available to the banks of the exporters and importers being paid.
