Algeria officially submitted an application to join the BRICS group last November. After China, Russia has expressed its support for this request, which comes within the framework of efforts to expand this coalition of five emerging countries.
The President of the Russian Federation Council Valentina Matvienko announced, Thursday, March 16, Moscow’s support for the request to join the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) presented last November by Algeria, the official Algerian news agency APS reported.
“Algeria wants to join the BRICS and we in Russia support this move,” she told APS after an interview with Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune in Algiers.
“For Russia, Algeria is a reliable and very important partner at the level of the African continent, a country with which we maintain an important cooperation in the field of trade and economy”, added Ms. Matvienko.
The President of the Upper House of the Russian Parliament also indicated that she had ” delivered to President Abdelmadjid Tebboune a message from his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, officially inviting him to pay a visit to Russia, as well as another invitation to participate in the second Russia-Africa Summit”.
She also said that she had expressed to President Tebboune her “heartfelt thanks for Algeria’s balanced position vis-à-vis events at the regional and international levels, and for its attachment to good relations with the Russian Federation”. , while emphasizing ” the great opportunities for expanding cooperation in various fields such as energy, transport, agriculture, infrastructure, education, culture and the pharmaceutical industry for the benefit of both country”.
Algeria announced last November that it had officially submitted an application to join the BRICS group.
China has already expressed its support for Algiers’ desire to join the group of emerging economies.
“China supports Algeria, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the Arab League and welcomes its desire to join the BRICS family,” said then-Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the end of September. , following his meeting with his Algerian counterpart, Ramtane Lamamra.
The Chinese diplomat had announced, at the beginning of last May, the beginning of a process of enlargement of the BRICS group. In this context, leaders of several developing countries, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Indonesia, Argentina, Nigeria, Algeria and Thailand, took part, on May 23, in a conference called “BRICS Plus”, and presented by Beijing as “ a new phase in the BRICS enlargement process”.
At the end of June, Argentina and Iran officially submitted applications to join the coalition of five emerging countries.
Today, the BRICS group represents 42% of the planet’s population (3.2 billion people) and around 25% of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP). The group, which created its own development bank in 2014 in an attempt to shake up the global financial architecture drawn by the Bretton Woods agreements, is now striving to play a more important role in the various bodies of global governance.
