Can BRICS+ become a true global bloc?

AWANI

BRICS+ commands immense population, economic, and resource power, but can it truly function as a unified global bloc? Professor Shandre Mugan Thangavelu from Sunway University weighs in.

Transcript

00:00Welcome back. BRICS Plus commands massive population, economic weight and resource power.

00:07But can it act as a unified global block?

00:10We have Professor Chandra Mugen-Tangavellu from Sunway University to tell us more about it.

00:17So fairly, the current BRICS Plus controls around, I believe, 45% of the population.

00:26With China and India, as you already know, they control a large proportion of the population.

00:31GDP, I think around 35%.

00:34And interestingly, they control 30% of the oil.

00:39Because Nigeria is there, Iran is there.

00:43Then, of course, Egypt, UAE, they all are there.

00:50So there's also interest to bring Saudi Arabia into this fold.

00:53So it's not OPEC, it's different from OPEC, but it's a different representation of the sort.

01:02So they also have control over the resources, especially oil.

01:09With China coming in and Indonesia joining them,

01:14China and Indonesia controls a large proportion of essential minerals.

01:19Chandra added that control of oil and key minerals boosts BRICS Plus influence

01:25and attracts others to challenge Western dominance.

01:28However, he said that despite these opportunities,

01:31the group faces limitations due to differing political systems and ongoing border disputes.

01:36There are opportunities to do that, but at the same time, there's a limitation of how much they can actually do.

01:45Because of fragmented, they have a very different political system, different political agenda,

01:53and even their border conditions within India, China, and also Russia.

02:01But having said that, the geopolitics is not a concrete, harmonized geopolitics,

02:07but fairly they can see the interests of the U.S. as something interests of the West,

02:13driving them in a more coherent manner to deal with that, like the reciprocal tariff and so on.

02:20So they can emerge as a block, but how much of that block can a lot of economic growth,

02:29trade and integration, and how much of that will allow for investment yet to be seen?

02:34Because the formation is more geopolitics rather than a geoeconomics.

02:39Whereas ASEAN was formed on a geoeconomics framework than the geopolitical framework.

02:44APEC was joined more on the geoeconomic framework rather than geopolitical framework.

02:50But opportunities arise because there are avenues for, one, different kind of international finance,

03:01because Russia has been pushed out of the global international financial framework.

03:08So fairly there was some kind of thinking and agreement between China, Russia, and India

03:14that they would use ruble for trade.

03:16So that kind of dimension can appear as an alternative vehicle currency,

03:21alternative form of currency that can be experimented within the BRICS-plus countries.

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