Intra-Brics Trade intensities: An Analytical study

Abstract

-Nearly 17 percent of the world‟s total commodity trade is accounted by BRICS countries. BRICS countries,categorised as leading emerging economies and political powers at the regional and international level, are causing changes in the architecture of international development cooperation. Keeping in view the increasing international importance of BRICS countries both economically and politically and increasing efforts by leaders of BRICS countries to enhance mutual trade and strengthen BRICS as a group financially and politically, one of the major objectives of present study is to find out how intense the trade is among BRICS countries so as to determine whether the value of trade among BRICS countries is greater or smaller than expected value on the basis of their importance in world trade. The share of BRICS countries in total world commodity trade has persistently increased from 7.33%i n 2 0 0 1 to17.25% in 2015. During 2001-2015, intraBRICS trade as percent of Total BRICS trade is almost doubled, increasing from 6.03 to 12.12. However it is worth mentioning that China is the dominant contributor in both cases. Out of total BRICS share in world trade (17.25), 12.08 percent is accounted by China only. India‟s share is just 2% while Brazil, Russia and South Africa have only 1.11, 1.56 and 0.51 % share in world trade. Further, the findings of the present study also reveals that the Intra-BRICS trade of major BRICS countries (China, India and Russia) became less intense as intra-BRICS trade intensities decreased in 2015 compared to that in 2001. Intra-BRICS trade intensity of BRICS as a group decreased from 0.82 in 2001 to 0.70 in 2015. For India and Russia it is 0.84 and 0.85 respectively and for China, it is just 0.59 in 2015, implying that China‟s trade with other BRICS countries is far less than expected, given its importance in world trade. However for Brazil and South Africa, trade flows between these two countries and other BRICS countries is more than expected given their importance in world trade, as the figures for intra-BRICS trade intensity are greater than one.