MOSCOW, June 9 (RIA Novosti) - The world's largest emerging economies known under the acronym BRIC are unlikely to form an influential organization due to major differences in their economies and culture, a leading Russian economist said on Tuesday.
The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China are due to hold their first ever summit in Russia next week, focusing on the global recession, reform of the financial system, and their further dialogue. The countries' foreign ministers held talks in Russia's Yekaterinburg in 2008, a meeting that was widely seen as an attempt to build a political alliance.
"BRIC has no future," Yevgeny Yasin, head of research at the Higher School of Economics, told RIA Novosti. "I believe it will remain an informal club in form and essence."
"Nothing unites them, and they cannot create a union which, let's say, would control the global economy. They face absolutely different objectives and have no shared interests," he said.
Yasin said Russia was culturally closer to Europe, and that the only thing it has in common with the other three BRIC countries is its poor human rights record.
He also said none of the BRIC countries' national currencies would become the world's reserve currency any time soon.
Yasin said the Russian ruble was not fit for the role due to lack of trust in Russian institutions, and the Russian economy's dependence on hydrocarbons. China's yuan, he said, needs to be made convertible to evolve as a reserve currency, which would lead to a slowdown in China's economic growth.
An analyst at India's Observer Research Foundation said on Tuesday that BRIC should outline a realistic action plan at the summit without "overloading their agenda."
"Reform of the existing financial architecture aimed at expanding the developing nations' role in it could be discussed by the BRIC states," Nandan Unnikrishnan told RIA Novosti.
He said the four countries should focus on expanding their role in international financial organizations, including the IMF and World Bank.
Unnikrishnan said BRIC should hold regular meetings at all levels. "We should learn to meet, to trust each other. We are still sounding each other out," he said, adding that once dialogue has been established, the group could tackle broader political issues, such as reform of the UN.
