BRICS supply chain resilience: Globalisation has lowered costs and enlarged markets. It has also left many economies dependent on a handful of suppliers for goods they cannot easily do without. Wars, export restrictions and disruptions to shipping have exposed these vulnerabilities repeatedly in recent years. The risks are greater for developing countries because replacing a supplier of fuel, fertiliser, medicines or industrial inputs can be expensive and slow.
Walking away from global trade would be a costly response. The more sensible course is to reduce concentrations that leave an economy exposed when one supplier or transport route fails. This is the useful meaning of de-risking.
BRICS has the economic weight to attempt this. Whether it can do so is another matter.
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From BRICS scale to resilience
BRICS now has 11 members. India’s Ministry of External Affairs says they account for about 49.5% of the world’s population, around 40% of global GDP and roughly 26% of global trade. Those numbers make BRICS important. They do not make it an integrated economic grouping.
Its members have very different economic strengths. Russia, Iran and the UAE are major energy producers. China has unmatched manufacturing depth. India has large capabilities in services and pharmaceuticals. Brazil is a major agricultural exporter. Several members possess minerals that will become increasingly important as energy systems change.
There is an economic case for making better use of these complementarities.
The starting point should be a map of concentrated dependencies. Critical minerals, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, food, energy and important industrial inputs would figure prominently. The exercise would have to be specific. A general declaration in favour of resilient supply chains is of little use to a manufacturer that discovers during a crisis that a component has only one viable source.
A BRICS Supply Chain Resilience Framework could focus on such weaknesses. Governments could identify areas of excessive concentration and make it easier for firms to locate alternative suppliers or invest in additional capacity. The value of the framework would lie in transactions that actually take place, rather than in the breadth of the document establishing it.
BRICS has already provided the political language for such an initiative. The 2025 Rio de Janeiro Declaration called for stronger supply chain resilience, particularly for developing economies, and sought greater private-sector participation. The harder part begins after such declarations are issued.
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Use the trade that already exists
There is enough commerce within BRICS to make the exercise worthwhile. India’s Commerce Ministry reported in May that merchandise trade among BRICS members had increased from $84 billion in 2003 to $1.17 trillion in 2024.
The size of the trade flow matters less than its composition. Supply chain resilience will depend on whether existing trade relationships can give firms alternative sources for products that are difficult to replace at short notice.
Food, fuel and fertiliser are obvious areas for closer cooperation. Shortages in any of them quickly show up in inflation, farm costs and household budgets. Pharmaceuticals deserve similar attention. So do the minerals and equipment needed for the energy transition.
This does not require BRICS members to build self-contained value chains. It would make little economic sense for each country, or even for BRICS as a group, to try to produce every component it consumes. Diversification works only when the alternatives are commercially viable.
There is another reason for keeping the ambition modest. BRICS is an informal grouping. It has no permanent secretariat, treaty structure or common budget, and its decisions are taken by consensus. Expecting it to operate like the European Union would set the project up for failure.
A limited programme may therefore work better. Sector-specific arrangements, investment facilitation and better information on suppliers would demand less institutional machinery and could still reduce vulnerability.
Payments are part of the supply chain resilience
Goods cannot move for long if payments cannot be made. Recent geopolitical disputes have made that obvious.
There is scope for BRICS members to improve links between their payment systems and expand the use of local currencies where businesses find it worthwhile. Such initiatives should be judged by whether they lower transaction costs or provide an additional settlement route. Political enthusiasm cannot compensate for an arrangement that firms find cumbersome or expensive.
India’s digital-payment links offer one example of what is possible. On August 30, NPCI International Payments Ltd and Uzbekistan’s National Interbank Processing Centre signed an agreement under which Indian travellers using UPI applications can make merchant payments through Uzbekistan’s UZQR system.
The arrangement is modest. Its importance lies in the model. Two domestic payment systems can be connected without either country abandoning its currency or replacing its existing infrastructure.
BRICS members could pursue more such links. They would be useful even if they never amount to the alternative global payments architecture that is sometimes discussed in political statements.
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The protectionist temptation
The language of economic security carries an obvious danger. Almost any import restriction can be defended as a measure to protect a strategic industry.
That would turn de-risking into old-fashioned protectionism.
For developing countries, the costs would be particularly high. They rely on imported machinery, technology, capital and intermediate goods to raise productivity. Forcing production home regardless of cost would make domestic industry less competitive.
Nor would shifting dependence from a supplier outside BRICS to a single supplier within the grouping solve the underlying problem. Concentration remains concentration.
Policy therefore needs some discipline. Governments should intervene where dependence can seriously disrupt production or access to essential goods. They should be wary of extending the same argument to sectors where suppliers are easily replaced and markets already offer adequate alternatives.
This distinction is important for the Global South. Most developing economies cannot afford the redundancy that rich countries can sometimes buy in the name of national security. Their best defence is usually a wider choice of suppliers and markets.
India’s BRICS chairship
India’s 2026 BRICS chairship offers a chance to give the resilience agenda some operational content. At the 16th BRICS Trade Ministers’ Meeting in Jaipur on August 7, members backed greater trade diversification and more resilient global value chains.
India could now push for a narrower set of deliverables. One would be a database of critical supply dependencies and alternative sources. Another would be measures that reduce obstacles to investment where additional production capacity is needed. Payment links could be expanded where there is a commercial case.
None of these measures carries the drama of a new BRICS institution or a common currency. They may prove more useful.
The real test will come during the next serious disruption. A manufacturer that loses a supplier should be able to find another without shutting a factory for months. An importer of medicines, fuel or fertiliser should have more than one credible source. Businesses should have a payment route that continues to function even when one channel is blocked.
If BRICS can improve those odds, its economic relevance will be easier to demonstrate. That would be a better measure of de-risking than the language of any communiqué.
Ram Singh is Professor and Head (MDPs) with Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT). Shalini Singh Sharma is Professor and Head – Training and Research at EGROW Foundation.