How BRICS nearly tripled its share of world output

Count India's economy the way the currency market does, and it makes 3.3 per cent of the world's output. Count what its farms and factories actually turn out, and the share is 8.2 per cent.

Same economy, same year, two answers.

The gap is not an accounting quirk. It decides how big India looks to a lender, how much it can borrow, and how loud its voice is in the rooms where the rules get written. This weekend, it sits at the head of the table in New Delhi.

BRICS opens its 18th summit on September 12 with 11 members and 10 partner countries. Count the bloc the first way, and it is the largest economic group on earth. Count it the second way, and it is not close.

Let’s start with the first. Purchasing power parity asks a plain question: what does a country actually produce? How many tonnes, how many hours, how many of the things people buy. By that measure, BRICS accounted for 40.5 per cent of the world's output in 2025, compared to the G7's 28.3 per cent, according to the International Monetary Fund. It passed the G7 in 2020 and has pulled away since.

In 1992, the bloc's share was 15.1 per cent. Some of that rise is countries joining rather than economies growing — the group had only four countries then; that’s eleven now. Even holding the membership fixed, today's eleven have gone from 26 per cent of world output in 2005 to 40.5 per cent.

Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates joined in January 2024. Indonesia joined in January 2025. Ten more came in last year as partners, who attend some meetings without signing the group's declarations. Twenty-one countries will be in the room.

Now the second way of counting — the one where the story turns. Convert each country's output into dollars at whatever its currency traded for that year, and BRICS made 27.9 per cent of world output in 2025, against the G7's 44.4 per cent. The IMF expects that gap to narrow by 2031 without closing.

The difference between the two numbers is the currency market.

India has felt it. In 2012, the Indian economy grew 5.5 per cent. Measured in dollars, it did not grow at all. Nothing had closed. The rupee had fallen.

Egypt is the sharper case. It floated the pound in late 2016, and its output in dollars fell from $351 billion to $247 billion in a single year, while the economy grew 4.2 per cent. Across 11 members, this has happened about one year in five since 1993.

That is the case for counting the first way; the case for the second way is simpler.

Oil, aircraft, medicines, and debt are priced in dollars, not in what a rupee buys in Delhi. A bloc that looks larger in purchasing power still has to find the dollars.

Which is close to what BRICS says it is for. The group wants more votes at the IMF and the World Bank, where quotas are set in dollars, and more trade settled in local currencies. Both would loosen the link between what a country produces and what its currency fetches.

India's own share has doubled since the term BRIC was coined. It made up four per cent of the world's output at purchasing power parity in 2001, and 8.2 per cent in 2025. The IMF expects 10 per cent by 2031. On the dollar measure, the same economy is 3.3 per cent of the world, which is where this story began.

Two things the totals hide. China alone accounts for 59.5 per cent of the bloc's output in dollars, so a sentence about BRICS rising is largely a sentence about China rising. And one member may not be a member. The chairship lists Saudi Arabia as a full member from January 2024, but Riyadh has never publicly confirmed it. Leave Saudi Arabia out and the bloc's 2025 dollar share falls from 27.9 to 26.8 per cent.

"There is full confidence that the summit will feature positive and meaningful discussions on various issues, with aspirations for global welfare," Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on September 11.

President Xi Jinping made the case for the group at the Kazan summit in October 2024. "It is for our shared pursuit and for the overarching trend of peace and development that we BRICS countries have come together," he said.

President Vladimir Putin arrived in Delhi on September 11 for his first BRICS summit outside Russia since the 2022 war with Ukraine.

Which measure the summit leans on will show in what it asks for: a bigger vote in institutions that count in dollars, or more trade settled outside them.- EndsPublished By: Pathikrit SanyalPublished On: Sep 11, 2026 16:59 IST