By Yaroslav Lissovolik

On January 6th, 2025 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil (a country that holds the chairmanship in the BRICS this year) declared that Indonesia has joined the BRICS bloc as a full-fledged member. The spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China has officially congratulated Indonesia on becoming a member of the BRICS grouping. China also noted the active role played by Indonesia in the development of the BRICS+ format that served as a key driver of subsequent BRICS expansion and outreach to the broader community of Global South nations. Both Brazil’s and China’s statements referred to the importance of Indonesia in the closer cooperation of the economies of the Global South. Indonesia, being the fourth largest economy in the world by population is also a member of the G20 and is in the top-20 of the world’s largest countries by GDP.

The expansion in the BRICS core that took place in 2023 during the BRICS summit in South Africa was put on hold in 2024 as the BRICS economies focused on the creation of the new partnership belt. Indonesia became one of the BRICS partner countries from the start of 2025, but in less than a week its earlier request to join BRICS as a full-fledged member was granted, with Indonesia thus becoming the tenth economy to join the grouping.

There are several implications of Indonesia’s entry into BRICS in the beginning of 2025 for the world economy. Firstly, Indonesia’s membership translates into BRICS expanding into one of the most dynamic regions of the world economy, namely Southeast Asia – before 2025 this was essentially the only major region of the Global South without BRICS core membership.

Another consequence of Indonesia’s accession is the possibility of closer relations between BRICS and ASEAN – in fact, within the partnership belt ASEAN has the highest number of members compared to other regions and integration blocs from the Global South. With Thailand and Malaysia accepting invitations to join BRICS as members of the partnership belt, further momentum to join BRICS may come from the other heavyweights in the ASEAN regional bloc. Closer linkages between ASEAN and BRICS have been among the main focus themes in the research of BRICS+ Analytics in the past several years.

With Indonesia joining BRICS, we expect ASEAN’s economic agenda to receive greater prominence in the priorities advanced by BRICS. In particular, more focus may be placed on issues pertaining to trade liberalization and cooperation among the regional blocs of the BRICS core economies. At this stage, there is still no clear road-map for either of these two tracks of economic cooperation within the BRICS+ circle. As we argued previously, closer ties between ASEAN and BRICS may render the latter more open to building linkages with advanced economies, their regional blocs and development institutions.

Indonesia’s membership in the BRICS takes the bloc’s share in the world’s population to nearly 47% and to more than 50% if the partnership circle of BRICS economies is included. Within the G20, Indonesia’s accession raises BRICS core representation in the global G20 platform to 6 economies, translating into a majority of the non-Western economies (10 national economies as well as the African Union as a regional bloc). It also further increases the share of BRICS in international economic organizations such as the IMF, where the BRICS core economies together with the partnership belt have more than 15% of the vote.

For Indonesia, BRICS membership will provide a platform for advancing its key development priorities across the Global South. It will also strengthen the country’s regional role by providing it with opportunities to advance ASEAN priorities within the BRICS development agenda. Closer economic linkages with BRICS economies will also create more scope for trade and investment diversification with partners from the Global South through boosting South-South economic cooperation.

In the end, as we expected in our preview of Brazil’s BRICS chairmanship for 2025, BRICS continues to be in expansion mode after the approval of the entry of new members during the BRICS 2023 summit in South Africa. Further news-flow on BRICS expansion later this year will concern the composition of the BRICS partnership belt and further trajectories of the bloc’s enlargement that may be unveiled during the BRICS summit in Brazil later this year.

Yaroslav Lissovolik is Founder of BRICS+ Analytics.