Introduction
The acronym BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) was first coined by Jim O’Neill in 2001 in his paper titled “Building Better Global Economic BRICs.” In this paper, Neill projected the emergence of BRIC countries as dominant forces in the global economic growth, surpassing the combined GDP of the advanced industrial economies of the G7 by the mid-21st century. Started in 2006, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, the first summit meeting of BRIC nations was held in 2009 in Yekaterinburg, Russia. After the inclusion of South Africa in 2010, the acronym BRIC became BRICS, and emerged as a framework to reflect the changing perspective of the liberal international order, where demand for reforms in the existing global order towards multipolarity was slowly taking center stage.
