The New Delhi Declaration, adopted at the BRICS summit held from September 11 to 13 under India’s chairmanship, puts institutional reform at the centre of the grouping’s agenda. The document calls for greater use of local currencies in trade, stronger cross-border payment systems, and structural reforms at the United Nations, including its Security Council, as well as at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. For a bloc that now counts eleven members representing roughly half the world’s population and 40 percent of global GDP, the declaration is as much a statement about governance as it is about economics.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, addressing leaders including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, warned that rising conflicts and tensions were having an increasingly negative and far-reaching impact on ordinary people. He called for deepening cooperation across the Global South and framed the expanded group as non-Western rather than anti-Western. “Reform of institutions of global governance has been on the BRICS agenda since its inception,” Modi said, adding that the organisation must not acquire the image of one seeking to replace global institutions. “The strength of BRICS lies in its diversity and cooperation.”
The accountability question now sits with the group’s financial institutions. The New Development Bank, signed into treaty in 2014 and active since 2015, forms the core of an alternative financial architecture alongside the Contingent Reserve Arrangement. It began with $50 billion in capital, contributed at $10 billion each by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, and has grown toward $100 billion. As of 2020 it had 53 projects underway worth around $15 billion. By 2025 it had approved more than $32 billion for 96 projects, with authorised lending of up to $34 billion annually focused on infrastructure. Bangladesh, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Uruguay joined in 2021, and South Africa hosts the bank’s African headquarters.
Those figures matter for the African members of the bloc. South Africa, which joined in 2010 after an invitation supported by China and backed by India and Russia, along with Ethiopia and Egypt, which became full members in 2024, are shifting from strategic ambiguity toward what the source describes as assertive flexibility. Ramaphosa, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi held separate conversations on strengthening the bloc’s strategic partnership across politics and security, economics and finance, and cultural ties. All three countries maintain relationships with competing Western powers even as they position themselves as leading African voices for the Global South.
The finance ministers and central bank governors of the member states, meanwhile, have been explicit about what they want from the multilateral system. In a joint statement, they called for international financial institutions to become “more representative, transparent and accountable,” arguing that the growing share of emerging market and developing economies in global output makes reform of global economic governance a consistent priority. The statement also criticised unilateral trade and finance-related actions, including tariffs and non-tariff measures described as inconsistent with World Trade Organisation rules, and encouraged the BRICS Payment Task Force to continue work on cross-border payments that are fast, low-cost and transparent. India, the statement noted, will push for progress on linking digital currencies across member countries.
India’s own leverage underpins its stewardship. Its total exports in the 2024-25 financial year amounted to roughly $825 billion, with services accounting for an estimated $387 billion, and it is a major provider of digital public infrastructure. With the presidency passing to China for 2027 by rotational procedure and consensus, India’s chairmanship is credited with balancing multifaceted interests among members and partner states.
The limits of collective action remain, however. Analysts note that the bloc’s economic weight, with China alone accounting for about 70 percent of its combined GDP, still outstrips its ability to act as a unified political body. In Central Asia, Chinese trade with the five regional states rose from $70 billion in 2022 to $106 billion in 2025, and a Eurasianet assessment published on August 20 described China as challenging Russia’s hold on the region’s arms market. Yet officials from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have also met representatives from the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, which have provided tens of millions of dollars in assistance, largely for economic development. Diversification, not alignment, remains the operating principle. The test for BRICS institutions will be whether declarations translate into regulatory support, funding and practical development outcomes.