From words to work: What the New Delhi Declaration sets out to do

Editor's note: Imran Khalid, a special commentator for CGTN, is a freelance columnist on international affairs. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

The New Delhi Declaration adopted by BRICS leaders at the 18th BRICS Summit sets out priorities for cooperation across a wide range of areas. Behind these broad commitments are a series of practical measures aimed at turning cooperation into concrete outcomes.

Read the Delhi text that way and it stops looking like a manifesto. It looks like a work order.

Paragraph 102, for instance, sets up the BRICS Multilateral Guarantees, an initiative piloted inside the BRICS New Development Bank to mobilize private capital and cut financing costs. The mechanism, though unglamorous, is precise: A guarantee lifts a project's credit standing, so private lenders price its debt lower. A finance ministry paying 9% on a transmission line does not need a new financial order. It needs a low enough coupon for the project to clear its hurdle rate. Shave a point and a half off the cost of financing, and a pipeline of stalled schemes becomes bankable.

Paragraph 60 keeps the BRICS Grain Exchange alive and opens it to other commodities. Members grow more than 40% of the world's food and farm output yet price almost none of it, because the benchmarks sit in Chicago and Paris.

Paragraph 20 presses for immediate restoration of a two-tier binding dispute mechanism at the World Trade Organization, the appellate bench that lost its quorum in December 2019. Restoring that bench is worth more to small trading nations than any paragraph about a fairer order.

Paragraph 22 goes further, condemning unilateral coercive measures contrary to international law for what they do to development, health and food security.

Compare this with the G20, the organization that used to carry this agenda once. Then Washington took the G20 chair and cut climate, debt, development, inequality and sustainability from the agenda, keeping three priorities: deregulation, energy supply and technology. US President Donald Trump said he would host the 2026 G20 Summit in December at Trump National Doral, a Miami golf resort. South Africa, which chaired the G20 last year, was not invited. And at the finance ministers' meeting in Asheville recently, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent framed the remedy as growth. Growth does not restore an appellate bench or underwrite a transmission line.

However, the Global South's economic agenda did not die. It changed address – to the BRICS finance ministers' and central bank governors' meetings in India in August and early September respectively, handing out assignments.

Rather than swelling its membership roll, the 18th BRICS Summit seated partner delegations from Burundi, the Philippines, Uruguay and Bahrain, each the chair of a regional organization: Burundi is chairing the African Union in 2026, the Philippines the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Uruguay the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, and Bahrain the Gulf Cooperation Council. That extends BRICS' reach to four regional blocs without handing veto power to a dozen more capitals – reaching without dilution.

The BRICS arithmetic is no longer marginal. Its 11 members account for roughly half of the world's population and about 40% of global GDP at purchasing power parity, against the G7's 28%. Intra-BRICS merchandise exports reached $1.17 trillion in 2024. Indian Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal told the summit the bloc represents almost a quarter of global trade and urged members to link their payment systems.

India has a working template: Its instant payments network clears more than 250 billion transactions a year and runs in 11 countries. The New Development Bank has approved 139 projects worth $42.9 billion, still modest beside the World Bank, but steadily compounding.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated the political case in one line: The Global South "stands in the front row of global crises but in the back row of the decision-making process." He asked members to draft 10 governance reform proposals and fold them into a roadmap by the next summit. That gives the proposal a deadline, it is not just a sentiment of intent.

Chinese President Xi Jinping called BRICS the most influential cooperation platform for emerging markets and developing countries. He also warned that "walled courtyards" only imprison those who build them, and proposed a BRICS initiative on artificial intelligence for new industrialization, resting on open-source sharing. That initiative matters immensely to members that may never train a frontier model themselves but will use tools built on one. China will host the 19th summit next year, and inherits Modi's to-do list rather than a blank page.

Judge Delhi by three things over the coming year: Whether the guarantee facility underwrites its first project and at what spread; whether the grain exchange prices a real cargo; and whether two member central banks connect their settlement rails and cut days off a payment. Communiques are cheap, basis points and settlement days are not, and Delhi has chosen to be judged in the expensive units.

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