BRICS nations agree on expansion, says South Africa foreign minister

Agreement on expansion paves the way for dozens of interested candidate nations to make their case for joining the grouping.

Leaders of the BRICS bloc of leading developing nations - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - have agreed mechanisms for considering new members, South Africa's foreign minister said on Wednesday.

From left: Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, China's President Xi Jinping, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov raise their arms as they pose for a group photograph, at the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg. (AFP)

Agreement on expansion paves the way for dozens of interested candidate nations to make their case for joining the grouping, which has pledged to become a champion of the developing "Global South".

Enlarging BRICS has topped the agenda at a summit taking place in Johannesburg, South Africa's commercial capital. While all BRICS members had publicly expressed support for growing the bloc, there had been divisions among the leaders over how much and how quickly.

"We have agreed on the matter of expansion," Naledi Pandor said on Ubuntu Radio, a station run by South Africa's foreign ministry.

"We have a document that we've adopted which sets out guidelines and principles, processes for considering countries that wish to become members of BRICS...That's very positive."

More than 40 countries have expressed interest in joining BRICS, say South African officials, and 22 - Iran, Venezuela and Algeria among them - have formally asked to be admitted.

(Reporting Carien du Plessis in Johanneburg and Krishn Kaushik in New Delhi; Additional reporting by Rachel Savage in Johannesburg Writing by Joe Bavier; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)