MOSCOW (Reuters) – Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is not expected to attend the Russian-hosted BRICS summit later this month, according to the Kremlin, which said the world’s biggest oil exporter would be represented by the Kingdom’s foreign minister.
BRICS, originally Brazil, Russia, India and China, has expanded in recent years to include South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, said that nine of the 10 BRICS member states would send their leaders, though Saudi Arabia would send its foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, to the summit in the Russian city of Kazan.
He did not give a reason for the expected absence of the crown prince, known as MbS.
Ushakov said “BRICS is a structure that cannot be ignored”.
He said BRICS members accounted for 45% of the world’s population, about 40% of oil production and about a quarter of global goods exports.
The term BRIC was coined by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill in 2003 to describe how the four rising economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China are likely to rival and overtake many of the West’s leading economies over the next half century.
In the two decades since then, the group has formed into an official structure though its economic weight is largely made up by China, the world’s second largest economy, and critics say the major members of the grouping have contradictory aims.
(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; writing by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by David Evans)
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