Rabat – Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has suggested that Algeria is exploring a potential admission to the BRICS economic group, saying that the country meets a “good part” of the BRICS’ membership criteria.
The bloc gathers influential economic powers, including China, Russia, India, South Africa, and Brazil, and many experts increasingly see it as an ideological and economic counterweight to the US and its allies in the West.
Algeria is interested in joining the increasingly powerful bloc as they “constitute an economic and political force,” Tebboune said last week in a televised interview.
The Algerian President touted his country’s potential to be a BRICS member, saying that it meets a “good part” bloc’s membership criteria.
“There is no need to get ahead of things,” Teboune cautioned, but he promised “good news.”
The Algerian president’s remarks came after Russian Vladimir Putin’s appeal to BRICS leaders to form a “truly multipolar system of intergovernmental relations.”
During the BRICS business forum in June, which Algeria attended, Putin said countries of the bloc are working on forming a new global reserve currency.
“The issue of creating an international reserve currency based on a basket of currencies of our countries is being worked out,” he announced as the US and its western allies intensified tensions on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine.
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A close ally of Russia, Algeria was among several Global South countries that abstained from voting on a UN General Assembly resolution in March that sought to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Other countries from the BRICS, including China, India, and South Africa, also abstained from voting for a UN resolution.
Algeria is one of the largest buyers of Russian-manufactured military equipment.
According to the data website Statista, Russia’s arms supplies to Algeria account for 80% of trade between the two countries in 2017-21.
According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), Algeria’s exports to Russia — mainly tropical fruits, hydrogen, Locust beans, and food products — amounted to $8.83 million in 2020.
