The 9th BRICS Summit concluded on September 4, 2017 in Xiamen, China. The three-day gathering began on September 3, 2017. It essentially brought together the five fast-growing economies i.e. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, who are seeking to play a greater role on the world stage.
The term BRIC was first coined by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill in 2001 in their Global Economics Paper, “The World Needs Better Economic BRICs” where the acronym BRICs stood for a grouping of the countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China which were all deemed to be at a similar stage of newly advanced economic development. The grouping of the four member countries was finally formalised during the first meeting of BRIC Foreign Ministers on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York in 2006. The first BRIC Summit was held in Yekaterinburg, Russia, on 16 June 2009. It was later agreed to expand BRIC into BRICS with the inclusion of South Africa at the BRIC Foreign Ministers’ meeting in New York in September 2010.
