India will host the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on September 12-13. This marks the fourth occasion that India has organized this significant gathering. The theme for this year is “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability.” The summit comes at a critical time, with rising military tensions, ongoing trade disputes, and evolving geopolitical alliances shaping the global landscape.
The gap is expected to widen further in the coming years. BRICS has become increasingly important to India’s external trade. Together, BRICS countries now occupy a central position in India’s trade basket. Trade within the bloc is dominated by a handful of countries.
Because of India’s growing purchases of discounted crude oil, china remains India’s largest trading partner and a key source of imports, while Russia’s importance has risen sharply. BRICS overtook the G7 in terms of global GDP share in 2020, according to the IMF’s World Economic Outlook (April 2026). By 2026, the bloc is estimated to account for 41 per cent of global GDP, compared with 28 per cent for the G7. In 2025-26, the bloc accounted for 22 per cent of India’s exports and 41 per cent of its imports, according to the Ministry of Commerce & Industry. China, the UAE and Russia accounted for 64 per cent of India’s exports to BRICS countries and 78 per cent of its imports from the grouping. China alone contributed 41 per cent of India’s imports from BRICS members, underlining its dominance in the bloc’s trade architecture. On the export side, the UAE accounted for 39 per cent of India’s exports to BRICS countries, driven largely by shipments of pearls, precious stones and jewellery.
Who Leads BRICS?
its economic strength is heavily concentrated in China and India, which together account for nearly 70 per cent of the bloc’s GDP Although BRICS now has 11 member countries. China alone contributes 48.5 per cent, followed by India at 20.7 per cent.
