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Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined BRICS leaders, the Chairs of the BRICS Business Council and the BRICS Women's Business Alliance for a family photograph in the national capital on the occasion of the BRICS Business Forum 2026.
The group photograph featured PM Modi alongside Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, his Brazilian counterpart Mauro Vieira, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, among other dignitaries. The BRICS Business Forum is the flagship private sector platform of the BRICS grouping and is convened annually in the Summit host country on the eve of the Leaders' Summit. It brings together business leaders, Ministers and Heads of State to discuss trade, investment, finance, technology and development challenges that shape the BRICS economic agenda. The Forum also serves as a platform where key ideas and suggestions from the Council are presented and discussed. It plays a strong agenda-setting role, with its conclusions and the Business Council's recommendations regularly reflected in BRICS Summit declarations and follow-up work plans. These areas include intra-BRICS trade, investment, digital economy, MSMEs, standards cooperation and value chain integration. The BRICS Business Forum comes as India hosts the 18th BRICS Summit under its 2026 chairship. India's Chairship is guided by the theme Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability, with development, sustainability and innovation forming key areas of focus. BRICS has emerged as an important platform for coordination among major emerging economies and for advancing the interests of the Global South in multilateral institutions. Its agenda covers development, finance, technology, trade and people-to-people exchanges. The grouping currently comprises 11 countries -- Brazil, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the UAE. According to background information on India's 2026 Chairship, BRICS members collectively account for around 49.5 per cent of the global population, 40 per cent of global GDP and 26 per cent of global trade. India's BRICS Chairship comes amid global economic fragmentation, technological disruption, geopolitical uncertainty, climate change and resource pressures. For India, the 2026 Chairship is focused on translating the expanded representation of BRICS into meaningful cooperation and tangible outcomes, while building consensus among its diverse members and strengthening the effectiveness of existing mechanisms. The Business Forum, with the participation of business leaders, Ministers and Heads of State, therefore forms an important component of India's BRICS chairship as the grouping discusses priorities spanning trade, investment, finance, technology and development. (ANI)
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