MOSCOW, June 29. /TASS/. BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) needs to come to a final agreement about the criteria for expanding the organization before considering particular candidates, Pavel Knyazev, the Russian Foreign Ministry's Ambassador-at-Large and Russia’s Sous-Sherpa in BRICS, said on Thursday.

"The readiness to cooperate with BRICS is clearly evident by the interest sparked by the initiative to consider the possibility of enlarging the alliance, expanding the integration. Currently, this work inside BRICS continues; the sherpa committee has been tasked by the leaders at the latest summit to develop modalities for the expansion process. Probably, pre-empting potential questions, I should say that there is an understanding that the modalities of the expansion process should be developed first of all, including criteria for possible candidates, governance principles, the procedures themselves, after which the five members will begin considerations on an individual basis, of course, everything is done by the five members on the basis of consensus, about the possibility of particular candidates," he said at a meeting of the Valdai international discussion club.

There are around 20 requests to join BRICS at the moment, Knyazev added. "I am confident that the issue of expansion will also be spotlighted by the five countries’ leaders at the upcoming summit," he said.

Russia’s Sous-Sherpa also noted that the trend towards de-dollarization of mutual settlements and increasing the use of national currencies in trade between BRICS members and Asian countries is growing. "The issue of de-dollarization, the potential creation of independent settlement payment mechanisms, tools of both servicing trade between BRICS nations and probably with other countries will be one of the most important issues on the agenda of the upcoming summit," the diplomat pointed out.

The BRICS summit will take place in the South African city of Johannesburg on August 22-24. South African Presidential Spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said earlier that the country’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, would soon complete consultations with other BRICS leaders on the summit details.