Enlargement of BRICS

Sidiropoulos said South Africa's membership broadened the representativeness of the BRICS mechanism and presaged the emergence of a novel pattern of global governance.

But for the time being, it was unadvisable to expand the framework, because the accession criteria had not been standardized, and also because imprudent aggrandizement was a ready recipe for unsound coordination and cooperation, she said.

Turzi said BRICS was not trying to change the trend of globalization or the distribution of power or to confront their developed peers, adding it was designed to be a coordination platform for emerging economies and a bridge between developing and developed countries.

Although more emerging countries were seeking BRICS membership, further expansion should be "slow and cautious," Turzi said.

Any newcomer should be strong enough in both political and economic terms and be endorsed by all the existing members, the scholar said.

Siuves said the five-member framework should not be expanded further.

The first reason was BRICS, now covering Eurasia, South America and Africa, had gained adequate representativeness, the economist said.

The second was that, as a mechanism still in its infancy, a larger membership was likely to hold up the consensus-building process, Siuves said.

Another factor was that, as every international organization needed a stable nucleus, BRICS should consider further enlargement after its nucleus fully matured, the economist said.

Andrey Ostrovsky, deputy director of the Far East Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said aggrandizement was helpful to boosting the economic weight and political influence of the BRICS bloc.

From a long-term perspective, however, it was more important to consolidate its foundation of internal economic cooperation, Ostrovsky said. The group should carry out more regional and sub-regional cooperation programs and forge ahead toward a more institutionalized future with concrete achievements, he said.

Ma said a number of rapidly growing emerging economies had shown profound interest in joining the BRICS framework.

The current members had explicitly stressed the mechanism was open and welcomed those with considerable economic strength, population size, regional representativeness and international influence when the time was ripe, he said.

However, a hasty enlargement was likely to impede its decision-making ability, Ma said, adding the priority now was to strengthen the cohesion of the current five members.