Interview: Goa summit to consolidate BRICS' global influence: Russian economist

The BRICS is beginning to act as an influential global organization capable of providing alternative options for development and cooperation, and the upcoming summit in Goa should help consolidate this status, a Russian economist has said.

The eighth summit of BRICS, which groups world's leading emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, is scheduled for the weekend in Goa, India.

As the bloc is gaining global influence, the summit should provide answers to current challenges facing the world and to the group's transformation from a "club" to an influential international organization, Vyacheslav Kholodkov, head of the International Economic Organizations Department of the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, told Xinhua in a recent interview.

"We have to admit that the summit will be held in a complicated situation," he said.

Almost all members of the group are facing certain difficulties, which the Western media is using for speculations about its imminent collapse, Kholodkov added, citing the change of leadership in Brazil amid the economic crisis there.

"So under these uneasy circumstances, the summit in India must find ways to overcome the negative trends, and BRICS should act as an organization defending the vital interests of developing countries," he said.

The expert, meanwhile, voiced his confidence in the group, saying that BRICS is experiencing a period of institutionalization, and is forming full-fledged mechanisms of cooperation, including the establishment of the New Development Bank, and the creation of a pool of foreign exchange reserves.

The heads of BRICS member states issued a statement on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Hangzhou last month, showing that they were able to act together in current difficult conditions.

They called for the establishment of a fair international order, and stressed that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) quota system does not reflect the actual weight of IMF members in the world economy, Kholodkov said.

The academic expects that leaders of BRICS countries at the Goa summit would expand the areas of cooperation agreed in Hangzhou.

"I hope that the summit would become an important step for BRICS in the process of gaining global influence and representing an alternative role in world politics by expressing the interests of developing countries," he added. Endi