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BRICS Grain Exchange plan seen as stalled nearly two years on
World Grain says the October 2024 formalization left grain market participants still unclear on the exchange’s role and implementation.
More than two years after Russia unveiled an initiative to create a BRICS Grain Exchange, the proposal appears to be stuck with limited practical progress, according to a guest editorial in World Grain.
The piece notes BRICS began as an intergovernmental grouping in 2009 with Brazil, Russia, India and China, and later expanded to include South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia, often referred to as BRICS+. It says that after BRICS was politically formalized at the BRICS Summit in Russia in October 2024, the global grain community has still been trying to understand what the exchange would actually entail.
The editorial argues that BRICS+ members could, in principle, support a more advanced grain marketplace because they collectively account for major parts of global production and trade, including China and India producing and consuming over 50% of global rice output, and China being the largest grains and oilseeds importer. It adds that China, India and Russia together make up more than 42% of global wheat production, and Russia remains the top wheat exporter, with Brazil and South Africa also cited as stable exporters.
World Grain says a modern BRICS-branded exchange could generate local grain benchmarks and provide tools for price risk management, but that uncertainty about the initiative is tied to ongoing challenges around price formation and hedging for grain exports and imports, including the need to borrow benchmarks produced overseas.
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