Saudi Arabia is still assessing BRICS membership

Counting Saudi Arabia as a member would be advantageous for BRICS

Saudi Arabia’s membership in the BRICS bloc of emerging economies is still being assessed more than a year after the kingdom was invited to join the alliance, according to the country’s minister of economy.

«The kingdom is always focusing on fostering more global dialogue,» Faisal Al-Ibrahim said in an interview with Bloomberg Television at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

«We’ve been invited to the BRICS, similar to how we’ve been invited to many other multilateral platforms in the past historically,» he said. «We assess many different aspects of it before a decision is made and right now, we are in the middle of that.»

Last year, Al-Ibrahim also said that the kingdom was in the process of evaluating the membership.

At the start of 2024, the multilateral BRICS consortium of five emerging economies—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—underwent its first expansion in 13 years, admitting Ethiopia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Iran to its ranks.Counting Saudi Arabia as a member would be advantageous for BRICS, given the kingdom’s relevance as a major oil exporter and its influence in the Middle East.