BRICS Summit in New Delhi: The grand finale is India's moment to navigate a bigger, and more divided bloc
India is hosting the 18th BRICS Leaders' Summit at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi, on September 12-13, 2026, preceded by a BRICS Business Forum on September 11.
The enlarged, 11-member bloc now includes several of the world's largest energy producers alongside its largest energy consumers, making energy security a shared agenda item across otherwise divergent member interests.
A key summit theme is deepening intra-BRICS trade and payment cooperation, including settlement of trade in domestic currencies rather than the US dollar.
The summit is expected to test whether an enlarged and more heterogeneous bloc — spanning oil exporters, oil importers, and countries with competing regional interests — can still produce consensus outcomes.
BRICS Energy Profile After Expansion
The 2024-25 expansion brought in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran — three of the world's leading oil exporters — alongside existing member Russia, while China and India remain among the world's largest oil and gas importers. This combination of major producers and major consumers inside a single grouping is structurally different from producer-only blocs like OPEC.
Key Details
- Pre-expansion BRICS (5 members) accounted for roughly one-fifth of global oil production, according to International Energy Agency estimates.
- With Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iran added, the expanded bloc's share of global oil production is estimated at around 40-42%.
- Saudi Arabia is the world's largest crude oil exporter (over 10 million barrels/day); the UAE produces roughly 3.2 million barrels/day and has targeted 5 million bpd by 2027.
- China and India remain among the top global oil importers, giving the bloc simultaneous producer and consumer weight.
Energy security is framed as one of the few issue areas where an otherwise divided, larger bloc — spanning Gulf oil exporters, Russia, and Asia's two largest importers — can find genuine common ground, since price stability and secure supply chains benefit producers and consumers alike.
Local Currency Trade Settlement and "De-Dollarization"
BRICS has increasingly promoted settling bilateral trade in members' domestic currencies instead of the US dollar, reducing exposure to dollar-denominated reserves, exchange-rate conversion costs and dollar-based sanctions risk. This is distinct from creating a common "BRICS currency," which member states — including India — have not endorsed.
Key Details
- India has expanded rupee-based trade settlement arrangements with over 20 countries, including Russia, the UAE, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Mauritius.
- India has purchased Russian crude oil using rupee-based settlement mechanisms since sanctions on Russia disrupted conventional dollar-clearing routes.
- A cross-border payment initiative, BRICS Pay, aims to interlink national payment systems — India's UPI, China's CIPS, Brazil's Pix and Russia's SPFS — to bypass dollar-clearing intermediaries such as SWIFT for intra-bloc transactions.
- Official BRICS positions, including India's, have consistently distinguished "local currency trade" (bilateral, using existing national currencies) from proposals for a unified "BRICS currency," which India has publicly not endorsed.
The summit's push to expand intra-BRICS trade and reduce dollar dependence is being pursued through incremental local-currency settlement and payment-system linkages rather than a single new currency, a distinction UPSC questions often test.
BRICS Financial Institutions: NDB and CRA
The New Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) are BRICS's two standing financial institutions, both established at the 2014 Fortaleza Summit as an alternative-financing track to the World Bank and IMF.
Key Details
- Both were created via agreements signed on July 15, 2014, at the 6th BRICS Summit in Fortaleza, Brazil.
- NDB: headquartered in Shanghai; authorised capital of US$100 billion; finances infrastructure and sustainable-development projects, and has since admitted non-BRICS members (e.g., Bangladesh, UAE, Egypt) as bank shareholders.
- CRA: a US$100 billion currency-swap arrangement for balance-of-payments support, with committed contributions of China ($41 billion), Brazil/India/Russia ($18 billion each) and South Africa ($5 billion).
- Both institutions operate on a consensus, non-Bretton-Woods governance model, distinct from the IMF/World Bank's weighted-voting structure.
The summit's energy-security and de-dollarization discussions build directly on this decade-old financial architecture, which gives BRICS members institutional channels for development finance and liquidity support outside dollar-based multilateral lenders.
- 18th BRICS Summit: September 12-13, 2026, Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi; Business Forum September 11.
- Summit theme: "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability."
- Expanded BRICS oil production share: ~40-42% of global output (vs ~21% pre-expansion).
- NDB and CRA both established July 15, 2014 (Fortaleza Summit), each capitalised/committed at US$100 billion.
- India has rupee trade-settlement arrangements with 20+ countries.
- CRA contribution shares: China $41bn; Brazil, India, Russia $18bn each; South Africa $5bn.