The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China, collectively known as the BRIC countries, will hold their first summit meeting on Tuesday in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg.

The four nations, as the key emerging economies in the world, are contributing increasingly to global economic growth and playing a vital role in stabilizing the world economic situation amidst the spreading international financial crisis.

BRIC's upcoming summit meeting, which has grabbed much of the international spotlight, marks the grouping's formal debut on the world arena.

About BRIC

"BRIC" is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India and China, the four major developing countries.

Jim O'Neill, global head of economic research at Goldman Sachs, is credited with putting forward the BRIC concept in 2001. In a report in 2003, O'Neill predicted that the world economic structure would have been reshuffled by 2050, and the BRICs would overtake most developed Western nations such as Britain, France, Italy and Germany and would stand with the United States and Japan to be the world's six major economies.

The BRIC bloc has become an important force in the international arena even as the four countries are seeking closer cooperation between them. Most analysts agree that there is a broad prospect for their cooperation.

One of the main reasons for their stepped up efforts to strengthen cooperation is that rapid growth of the four economies in recent years has prompted the need for them to begin to reposition themselves in the international arena, analysts say.

Secondly, the on-going financial crisis, which started last summer in the United States and has quickly spread to the rest of the world, has made them more convinced of the urgency of establishing a new international political and economic order.

In addition, their strengthening bilateral ties and mutual political trust, as well as improved cooperation mechanisms, especially their ever closer trade links, have created favorable conditions for enhancing cooperation.

Focus of the summit meeting

As BRIC refers to four of the world's fast growing economies, economy and finance would likely top the agenda of the first meeting of the BRIC leaders, apart from strengthening the framework for cooperation, said Brazilian Deputy Foreign Minister Roberto Jaguaribe in a recent interview with Xinhua.

Jaguaribe said discussions would likely be held on decisions taken at the G20 and G8 plus five summits and the right of emerging countries to have a bigger say in international affairs.

According to professor Sun Lijian, deputy dean of the Economic School at Fudan University in Shanghai, BRIC leaders are expected to ask the US and European governments as well as relevant international organizations to strengthen supervision of these countries' financial capital and enhance risk warnings and information disclosure in the financial services.

Sun also said BRIC leaders would establish a relationship of mutual cooperation and common development. A unified mode of cooperation would have bigger scale effects, thus giving an impetus to mutual support and coordination among emerging market economies, Sun said.

Indian political scientist S.K. Gupta told Xinhua that the BRIC leaders are expected to discuss such issues as the future orientation of cooperation and ways of handling future financial crises with less reliance on the US dollar.