DUBAI, January 20. /TASS/. Saudi Arabia has not made the final decision to join BRICS and is still assessing its possible membership in this association, Bloomberg reported citing the country’s minister on Economy and Planning Faisal bin Fadhil Al-Ibrahim.
"The kingdom is always focusing on fostering more global dialogue," Faisal Al-Ibrahim said in an interview with the agency’s television at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
"We’ve been invited to the BRICS, similar to how we’ve been invited to many other multilateral platforms in the past historically. We assess many different aspects of it before a decision is made and right now, we are in the middle of that," he said.
Representatives of Saudi Arabia repeatedly stated that the kingdom's authorities have not made a final decision on BRICS membership. Saudi Arabian Commerce Minister Majed bin Abdullah al-Qasabi said at last year's meeting of the World Economic Forum that the kingdom had not yet officially joined the group.
In early January 2024, Saudi state television reported that the country had become a full member of the association this year. However, the channel subsequently deleted this report from its social media accounts.
The decision to invite new members to the community was made at the BRICS summit, which took place in Johannesburg in August 2023. Commenting on the results of the meeting, Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said that the kingdom would study the invitation and make an "appropriate decision." According to him, his country expected BRICS to provide details on the terms of its membership. During the BRICS summit held in Kazan last October, Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov said Saudi Arabia would attend the event as an invited state. He also stressed that the kingdom was showing interest in close cooperation with the group. The Saudi delegation at the Kazan summit was headed by the Foreign Minister.