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BRICS fight waning clout with $150b deal in Brazil summit

July 14, 2014 - 20:55 By Korea Herald
The leaders of five of the world’s largest emerging markets will showcase a new currency reserve fund and development bank this week. Critics say neither is enough to revive the group’s waning clout.

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, known as the BRICS, will approve the creation for the $100 billion reserve fund and $50 billion bank at a July 15-16 summit in Brazil’s coastal city of Fortaleza and the capital Brasilia.

The initiatives are born out of frustration with a lack of participation in global governance, particularly in the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, said Arvind Subramanian, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The measures aren’t big enough to boost growth or cohesion in the group as foreign investor sentiment sours and member states focus on issues close to home, such as Brazil’s elections, the conflict in Ukraine and new economic policy plans in India.

“It’s hard to see a lot of impetus at this stage for the BRICS in general and for these initiatives in particular,” Subramanian said by telephone from Washington. “There’s going to be a lot of attention on domestic issues.”

Economic growth in the five countries is projected to average 5.37 percent this year, half the pace seen seven years ago, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Brazil and Russia will grow 1.3 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively.

Yuri Ushakov, Russian presidential aide on foreign policy, said in an interview that the group’s growth rate is still above that of the global average and that its economic and political weight is increasing. (Bloomberg)