BRICS: Challenging the West

Gamal Essam El-Din , Tuesday 29 Oct 2024

President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi emphasises the importance of Egypt’s role in BRICS bloc and of developing relations with Russia, reports Gamal Essam El-Din 

BRICS: Challenging the West
Al-Sisi attending the BRICS meeting

 

President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi joined the heads of BRICS member states last week in the Russian city of Kazan to attend the 16th BRICS Summit. Egypt joined the economic bloc in January 2024.

Speaking in the summit’s first plenary session on 23October, President Al-Sisi said that the global financial system, including international financial institutions and multilateral development banks, must be reformed if they are to meet developing countries’ needs and underlined the need to capitalise on the comparative advantages of the bloc’s member states to implement joint projects in key economic sectors, including energy, infrastructure, manufacturing and technological innovation.

Al-Sisi also highlighted the importance of using member countries’currencies in settling transactions between them, and the need to activate the role of the bloc’s New Development Bank in financing development projects in member states.

Recent years have exposed the inability of the international system to address global economic and development needs: “As we see, there is a debt crisis in developing nations and a financing gap of around $4 trillion,” said Al-Sisi.

According to Reuters, in 2023, net flows turned negative for developing countries, meaning they paid more to service external debts than they received in new external finance, and the net negative flow for 2024 is expected to be larger.

BRICS was formed in 2006 by Brazil, Russia, India, China and Russia. South Africa joined in 2010.

The aim of the bloc is to bring together the world’s most important developing economies to counter the power of wealthier countries in North America and Western Europe. On 1 January 2024, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates became full members and during the latest Summit, BRICS agreed to include a further 13 countries as partner states.

Speaking on 24 October, Al-Sisi said the summit must make the most of the opportunity to boost South-South cooperation, promote knowledge sharing across an array of domains and implement mutually beneficial joint projects.

“Here, I would like to reaffirm Egypt’s commitment to fostering partnerships and initiatives aimed at enhancing technical cooperation and capacity-building projects with interested countries,” said Al-Sisi.

Head of parliament’s Arab Affairs Committee Ahmed Fouad Abaza said President Al-Sisi’s attendance at the BRICS Summit reflects hopes that the bloc can play a greater role in rebalancing the world order.

“The West’s double standards in dealing with international crises and its resort to economic sanctions to force countries to align with its policies are now apparent to all,” said Abaza. “BRICS offers the hope that emerging and developing countries can have a greater say in international affairs, and that UN Security Council resolutions and international treaties addressing humanitarian crises like Gaza and Lebanon will be treated with more respect.”

President Al-Sisi underlined how the crisis in the Middle East – Israel’s year-long war in Gaza and its spread to Lebanon – reflect the double standards that have come to define the international system.

“The war provides ample evidence of what our world has become – an international system built on hollow principles and double standards,” said Al-Sisi. “BRICS should oppose the imposition of unilateral policies.”

He also pointed to the negative impact of the war in the Middle East on shipping and navigation in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, affecting international trade and the stability of global food supply chains. In September, Al-Sisi pointed out that income from the Suez Canal had fallen by 60 per cent over the previous 7-8 months as a result of regional conflicts and attacks on ships in the Red Sea.

Professor of political science at Cairo University Tarek Fahmy said Egypt’s membership of BRICS could open the bloc’s markets to Egyptian exports and that “Egypt fully supports the bloc’s move towards scrapping the use of the US dollar in favour of local currencies.”

He argued that Russia playing host to 20 world leaders, including Al-Sisi, China’s President Xi Jinping, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has recreated BRICS as a forum that can challenge the hegemony of the West, though Minister of Foreign Affairs Badr Abdelatty has said Egypt joined the bloc as an economic gathering and not “a political axis”.

President Al-Sisi met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit. In statements to Russian news agencies, Al-Sisi praised “the development of bilateral relations” between Egypt and Russia, singling out Moscow’s “effective contribution to national projects in Egypt”, including Egypt’s first nuclear power plant at Al-Dabaa on the Mediterranean coast which is being built by Russia’s state-owned energy corporation Rosatom.

He also pointed out that the Russian Industrial Zone on the Suez Canal will soon be up and running, and that MPs are currently discussing an agreement that will unlock government financing for the zone.

Up to 32 Russian companies have expressed interest on establishing plants in the zone, attracted by preferential tax rates and lower energy tariffs.

Al-Sisi further expressed Egypt’s desire to strengthen relations with Russia on a bilateral basis, building on the Strategic Partnership Agreement signed between the two countries in 2018.

Putin called Egypt a “long-term and reliable partner of Russia” and said “Russia gives special importance to expanding trade and economic relations with Egypt which account for about a third of the trade turnover between Russia and Africa.”

During his stay in Russia, Al-Sisi met with his Palestinian, Chinese, South African and Iranian counterparts.

Al-Sisi and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian stressed the importance of efforts to develop bilateral ties between the two countries following decades of frosty relations.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 31 October, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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