New Delhi, Sept. 10 -- A quarter century ago, a Goldman Sachs economist coined a four-letter acronym to describe four fast growing emerging economies and tried to rhyme it with 'brick' to indicate their strength and longevity and named his research paper 'Building Better Global Economic BRICs'.
This acronym soon started catching the attention of the world brick-by-brick, and this new term, 'BRIC', joined the investing lexicon to describe the quartet of Brazil, Russia, India and China as future drivers of global economic growth.
It grew in size as well - to five with the inclusion of South Africa in 2010, renamed 'BRICS' - and has eleven member-countries now. The leaders, however, decided to continue with the five-letter name for this multi-nation bloc.
Interestingly, the first government-level meeting of this bloc in 2006 focused a lot on the situation surrounding Iran and the Middle East. Now, two decades later, Iran will again be a key point of discussion when the leaders meet here for the BRICS Summit 2026 this weekend. Besides, Iran itself is now a member of this grouping, and its President Masoud Pezeshkian is attending the Summit.
Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE became full members of BRICS in 2024 and Indonesia in January 2025.
Besides, Belarus, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam joined BRICS as Partner Countries last year.
As a multi-nation bloc, BRIC was formalised at the first meeting of BRIC foreign ministers on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York in 2006.
The inaugural BRIC Summit of the heads of states or governments of the four countries was convened in Yekaterinburg, Russia, in 2009. It was attended by the then Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Russia's Dmitry Medvedev, Hu Jintao from China and Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
While Lula remains the only one from the original four to still hold the office, he is unlikely to attend the September 12-13 summit and is expected to be represented by his
foreign minister.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.