The economist who coined the BRICS acronym, a quarter century after noting the growing influence of developing countries, has stated that these countries may create alternatives to the dollar.
Jim O'Neill told the agency that recent advances in payment technologies have changed his view on the prospects for alternative financial mechanisms among the BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
"About 18 months ago, I would have said it was a fantasy—the idea that the BRICS countries could create some kind of alternative financial instrument," he said in an interview.
He said this was partly because thinking about the global monetary system had been shaped for decades by the dollar's dominance, established after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in the 1970s. De-dollarization has become an increasingly important goal for many developing economies in recent years, although the dollar remains the undisputed dominant global reserve and trading currency.
O'Neill, a former Goldman Sachs economist, noted that BRICS countries have struggled to translate their shared vision into concrete policies due to diverging geopolitical and economic interests.
"The symbolism is certainly powerful," O'Neill said. "But in terms of concrete results, with the notable exception of the creation of the New Development Bank, I'm hard-pressed to think of anything else."
BRICS is discussing alternatives to dollar-based payment systems, from the BRICS Pay initiative to the unification of national systems such as India's UPI, China's CIPS, and Brazil's PIX, as well as the possible use of central bank digital currencies.
The original four held their first summit in 2009 and invited South Africa a year later. The association later evolved into BRICS+, a platform for advancing the interests of the Global South, which included, among others, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, and the UAE.
O'Neill co-founded BRICS+ Thinking, a non-profit analytical platform that will commission research on cooperation between Western countries and BRICS+, as well as develop its own indices and growth forecasts.
O'Neill noted that BRICS is now attracting more attention:
"I joke that I don't recall any American president in the past 25 years even mentioning BRICS. And Donald Trump never tires of talking about them."