Masud Bin Momen, Bangladesh’s foreign secretary, said today that there is no cause to be discouraged about Bangladesh’s exclusion from the BRICS as Dhaka hopes to join this group of developing economies in the future.
“It’s an ongoing process (to get BRICS membership),” he told reporters at the foreign ministry here.
Bangladesh aspires to be included in the following phase, according to the foreign secretary, who described this as just the first stage.
“In the meantime, we also got time to some extent,” he added.
Momen said that Bangladesh remains a part of the New Development Bank (NDB) while the NDB is the only tangible outcome of BRICS over the last 15 years.
“There are many issues – political and regional, and there is the issue of maintaining balance (to be included in BRICS),” he said while responding to a question.
He claimed that although there were more interested countries and efforts to create a geographical balance, they were not all granted membership in the BRICS.
At the recently finished conference, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Egypt, and Ethiopia were among the six nations asked to join the BRICS.
The declaration was made during two days of discussions at the summit in Johannesburg between South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, took part in the conversations remotely.
Since BRICS is a consensus-based organization, all members must concur on all decisions.
