Saudi Arabia not a member of Brics yet says minister

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Saudi Arabia has not formally become a member of the Brics bloc of countries, the kingdom’s minister of commerce has confirmed.

“Saudi Arabia has been invited to attend Brics, we have not yet officially joined Brics,” Majid Al Kasabi told the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The minister’s statement comes in response to an earlier report by Saudi state TV that the kingdom had joined the bloc, only for the station to remove the report from its social media accounts later, Reuters reported.

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Last August the founding members, Brazil, Russia, India, and China, together with South Africa, which joined a year after the bloc came together in 2009, invited six other nations, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and Argentina, to become part of their group.

Argentina declined the invitation after President Javier Milei, who took office this month, reversed his predecessor’s membership bid.

The five invitees sent senior-level representatives to a Brics “sherpa meeting”, when personal representatives of the leader of a nation come together for negotiations, in Durban, South Africa, and fully participated in the gathering, Bloomberg reported, quoting South Africa’s envoy to the bloc, Anil Sooklal, from December 2023.

Sooklal said that the new members will send officials to a sherpa meeting in Moscow on January 30.