Six countries invited to join BRICS group

Economic experts have warned that opting to include countries openly antagonistic toward the West, such as Iran, could risk shifting the group towards becoming an anti-Western bloc.

“Economically, not many of the countries that are applying to join are particularly large,” former Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill, who coined the term BRICS, told Bloomberg earlier this week.

Current members have “had enough difficulty trying to agree just between the five of them,” O’Neill said.

“So beyond the admittedly hugely powerful symbolism, I’m not quite sure what having a lot more countries in there is going to achieve,” he added.