BRICS nations currently lead the way in global foreign investment according to the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in its latest Global Investment Trends report.

The report said while there was a 13 percent increase in overall investment globally, 70% came from emerging nations and was invested in other transition economies.  Four of the BRICS countries are already major suppliers of commodities to the fifth member (China) who in turn sells manufactured goods to them.

The BRICS acronym was first coined in 2001 as BRIC to highlight the rise of four major emerging economies (minus South Africa at the time).  Since then, trade among the five has grown by leaps and bounds and some analysts say the group is now poised to be able to challenge the dominance in the World Trade Organization (WTO) of the G-7 club of the richest, industrialized nations.

At a BRICS summit meeting in the Chinese beach resort of Sanya in early April, four of the nations declared themselves committed “to support a strong, open, rules-based multilateral trading system embodied in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and a successful and comprehensive and balanced conclusion of the Doha Development Round.” Russia is not a member of the WTO.

BRICS believes that the stalled Doha trade negotiations, which many pundits are already declaring dead, are the only means to correct the imbalance in global trade which has favored developed nations for decades. WTO Director, Pasqual Lamy has warned that the (DOHA) world trade deal is on the verge of failure.

Analysts believe that if the BRICS nations could come up with a common agenda, they would have considerable clout in the WTO. Many analysts blame the United States and the European Union for the present impasse in failing to reach a compromise on agriculture subsidies while calling for China, India and Brazil to make their countries more open. Making real cuts in agriculture subsidies in rich countries like the United States and France was supposed to be the main goal of the Doha round when it began in 2001.