CAIRO, January 2. /TASS/. Entering BRICS will benefit Egypt in a number of ways, Mohamed Bagha from Suez Canal University opined.

"Egypt will get a range of advantages from joining BRICS, with the most noticeable being the arrival of new investment flows," Al-Youm as-Sabia news portal quoted the expert as saying. "Besides, Egypt will be able to profit from increasing trade turnover with BRICS countries," he added as he noted that at least 42% of the planet’s population live in BRICS, with the grouping accounting for 32% of the global GDP.

According to the expert, BRICS is capable of "putting pressure on Western countries without allowing them to make decisions unilaterally while making them take the interests of member countries into account." In all, at least 19 countries are seeking to join BRICS, Bagha said. However, "the most effective economies" became members of the association at the initial stage of the expansion, he added. The organization itself, Bagha, who is professor of business administration, said, is "one of the world’s strongest in the sphere of politics and economy."

The BRICS group, established in 2006, first expanded in 2011, when South Africa joined the four founding nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China). Five new members (Egypt, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia) formally became full-fledged members of the BRICS group on January 1. Russia assumed BRICS’ one-year rotating chairmanship on the same day.