Adnan Adams Mohammed
The economic alliance between Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) may witness a new admission from among African countries as Ghana is keenly showing interest to join the bloc.
Sources within government has affirmed that informal discussions have started towards exploring the feasibility of Ghana joining the BRICS economic bloc.
President Nana Akufo-Addo recently joined over 40 other Heads of State to attend the 15th BRICS Summit raising concerns as to whether or not the country is turning its back on the foreign policy of positive neutrality which saw the country in the past not aligning to any of the world’s superpowers. However, Ghana’s High Commissioner to South Africa, has said the decision to join or not will be informed by national interest.
“It’s beyond doubt that BRICS is now a force to reckon with. If you look at the countries it started with, four, today we’ve been told that they met and have accepted 6 more [Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE],” Charles Owiredu had said during an exclusively interview with JoyNews on the sidelines of the summit held in Johannesburg South Africa.
“The combined GDP is now 30 percent of Global GDP within these 11 countries so they are a force to reckon with.”
When asked if Ghana was considering making a formal application to join the Economic Bloc, Mr Owiredu intimated “We’ve been discussing amongst ourselves when the president came.”
“There’s been some discussions that we started looking at some opportunities that exist within as BRICS, you know already they do have the development bank that countries have started accessing credit and it is helping a lot of countries to develop” while adding The president has started looking at it but “a decision has not been taken yet.”
The High Commissioner however dispelled suggestions that Ghana is being lured by the posture of other West African countries such as Nigeria which have formally applied to join BRICS adding that whatever eventual decision the president will make will be guided by the sole needs of the Ghanaian people.
The bloc, which accounts for over 40% of the world population, is on an intensive membership expansion drive to admit new countries from among emerging economies, especially in Africa.
Cuurent global economic trends is pushing Ghana government to apply for membership as Nigeria did recently. It is rumored that Ghana is been pushed to join BRICS by China which controls over a third of the country’s external debt amounting to some US$1.7 billion.