Brazil, Russia, India and China, the world’s biggest emerging market economies or the BRIC countries, last week vowed to turn their four-way group into a powerful instrument for changing the world, affirming their global economic clout reported The Hindu. On the last day of their meeting in Yekaterinburg, in the Ural mountains, the BRIC countries institutionalised BRIC, agreeing to hold regular meetings at the level of Foreign Ministers.

They “confirmed the aspirations of the BRIC countries to work together with each other and other states in the interests of strengthening international security and stability foreign ministers from the BRIC countries said in a joint communique”, reported Reuters.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said BRIC would work to “support global stability and ensure uninterrupted and manageable global development.”

Speaking at a joint press conference later, Mr. Lavrov said it was only natural that the BRIC grouping had taken shape. “We are the world’s fastest growing economies, we have many common interests in the globalised world and share many views on how to build a more democratic, fair and stable world.”

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee hailed BRIC as a “unique combination of mutually complementary economies” and platform to promote energy and food security, fight terrorism and reform global political and financial bodies.

The four BRIC countries, which account for more than one tenth of the world’s gross domestic product, said they would boost cooperation on a range of fronts and work on ways to ease the burden of soaring global food prices.

The term BRIC was coined by Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs to describe how the four swiftly growing economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China are likely to rival and then overtake many of the West’s leading economies in the next half century.