Ahead of the BRICS summit in Brazil there is increasing newsflow on the widening of the array of emerging market economies that are raising their level of cooperation with the BRICS grouping
Ahead of the BRICS summit in Brazil there is increasing newsflow on the widening of the array of emerging market economies that are raising their level of cooperation with the BRICS grouping. According to Brazil’s Ministry of Foreign affairs, one such economy is Vietnam that has become a member of the BRICS partnership belt in mid-June 2025 – this was later confirmed by Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign affairs. Vietnam has participated in the BRICS+ outreach meetings in 2024 and has developed close economic ties with a number of BRICS economies. The addition of Vietnam to the BRICS+ circle will add economic dynamism to the evolution of the bloc, with important additional effects relating to the greater scope for economic cooperation between BRICS and ASEAN.
Vietnam is the emerging powerhouse of Southeast Asia with a population of more than 100 million and some of the highest GDP growth rates in 2024. It has concluded a number of bilateral FTAs with such economies as Chile and South Korea as well as multilateral agreements with the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Vietnam’s economy plays a key role in the assembly segments of such sectors as electronics, with some of the largest global companies such as LG, Samsung and Apple positioned in the country. In recent periods, Vietnam has also featured as an important gateway to supply chain diversification, though in the longer term the key challenge will be increasingly centering on the transition from serving as an assembly segment in global value chains to one of the key regional and global innovation hubs and digital economy centers.
For BRICS economies, a partnership with Vietnam will hence harbor important trade and investment benefits related to greater export opportunities in a growing market and production localization that may take advantage of the country’s competitive labor force. Vietnam’s diversified network of trade alliances may also be beneficial for the BRICS bloc in expanding its own network of trade and investment accords across the Global South. Vietnam may also feature as an important example for other regional economies of the possibility to combine BRICS partnership with continued constructive economic relations with other parts of the global economy, including the largest developed countries.
Another key implication of Vietnam’s accession to the BRICS partnership belt is the further improvement in the connectivity between BRICS and ASEAN. With Indonesia becoming a member of the BRICS core earlier this year, the addition of Vietnam to the BRICS partnership circle results in 4 out of 10 ASEAN members being either members of the core or BRICS partners. Within the partnership circle ASEAN now has 3 representative countries (Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam) in the circle of 10 BRICS partner economies, making ASEAN the most represented region/bloc within this BRICS+ partnership category. Cambodia and Lao PDR have participated in the BRICS+ outreach meetings and may be considered as the potential partners of the BRICS bloc, which in turn implies that the majority of ASEAN members are making concrete and palpable steps towards building relations with BRICS.
In the end, Vietnam’s accession to the BRICS partnership circle transforms the BRICS+ bloc (if treated as core membership and the partnership belt) into a 10+10 format (10 core members (not counting Saudi Arabia) and 10 partner economies). Such a configuration may engender comparisons of BRICS+ with a G20 formation for the Global South (the global G20 platform has 21 de facto members if AU and the EU are counted, with BRICS+ also featuring 21 if Saudi Arabia is taken into account). For BRICS, the accession of Vietnam to the partnership circle may be viewed as the addition of one of the most dynamic economies from the most dynamic region of the world (ASEAN/Southeast Asia) within the most dynamic segment of the world economy (Global South). Such a valued addition to the BRICS+ platform also further facilitates the implementation of the format of “integration of integrations” (economic cooperation among the regional integration blocs) by forging closer linkages between BRICS and ASEAN. In this vein, there may be a pattern pursued by BRICS in further expansion of the core and the partnership circle whereby further additions come from some of the key participants in the respective regional integration arrangements of the developing world, providing thus more scope for the subsequent paradigm of “integration of integrations” within BRICS+ to unfold.
Yaroslav Lissovolik is Founder of BRICS+ Analytics.
