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BRICS is an acronym used to talk about the countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Many economists think that all these countries are at a similar stage of economic development. When people write about these countries, they usually write "BRICS" or the "BRICS countries".
The acronym was invented by Jim O'Neill, an economist who worked for Goldman Sachs. In 2001, O'Neill wrote an article that he called "Building Better Global Economic BRICs".[1][2][3]
Mexico and South Korea were the only other countries with economies that are like the BRICs. O'Neill did not include these countries because they were considered already more developed, as they were already members of the OECD.[4]
In August 2023, Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were invited to join the group. Full membership of these countries will take effect on 1 January 2024.[5] They also proposed to have a “partnership model” for other countries and talked about starting a common currency. They planned to use the US dollar less.[6]
A total of 15 countries have formally applied to join BRICS, listed as follows:[7]