BRICS and Bangladesh: More Options, Less Dependence
The two-day 18th BRICS summit began in New Delhi on Saturday (September 12), bringing together leaders such as Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, underscoring the growing weight of the expanded grouping in global affairs.
India had also invited Bangladesh Prime Minister Tarique Rahman to the BRICS outreach session in his capacity as chair of BIMSTEC, but Dhaka ultimately chose not to participate, arguing that the prime minister’s first visit to India should be bilateral rather than multilateral.
The episode may seem like a minor diplomatic detail, but it points to a larger strategic question: how should Bangladesh engage an expanding network of emerging powers without simply replacing one form of dependence with another?
That question matters because the global economic order is changing. Rival trade blocs, sanctions, geopolitical tensions and recurring supply-chain disruptions are making the world economy less integrated and more fragmented.
For a country like Bangladesh, this creates both risks and opportunities: new markets, finance and partnerships, but also greater vulnerability if any single relationship becomes too dominant.
BRICS provides a platform for selective cooperation in areas such as development finance, trade, energy and payments, while giving emerging economies greater institutional alternatives beyond the traditional Bretton Woods system.
For Bangladesh, the question is therefore not whether BRICS will replace the existing global order, but whether engagement with it can expand the country’s economic and strategic options without creating new dependencies.
Bangladesh’s economy is already deeply connected to several centres of global power: China supplies industrial inputs and infrastructure finance; India provides connectivity and energy cooperation; the United States and European Union remain crucial markets for garment exports, which still account for more than 80 percent of the country’s total export earnings; and the Gulf states are major sources of energy and remittances.
This interconnectedness is an asset, but it becomes a vulnerability when dependence on any one partner becomes excessive.
Bangladesh lacks the economic weight to allow a single relationship to narrow its policy choices, and replacing one dependency with another would defeat the purpose of diversification.
BRICS can help widen those choices, not as a new camp for Bangladesh to join, but as an additional platform for markets, finance, investment and technology.
The objective is not to reduce interdependence, which is neither possible nor desirable, but to manage it: diversify critical relationships, reduce excessive exposure and preserve enough room for Dhaka to make decisions in its own interest.
For a country of Bangladesh’s size, strategic autonomy is less about standing apart from major powers than about ensuring that none becomes indispensable.
What can BRICS actually offer Bangladesh? The clearest evidence is already visible through the New Development Bank (NDB), which Bangladesh joined in 2021.
The bank has financed a $320 million Dhaka water-supply project and, in 2025, provided its first private-sector loan in Bangladesh, a $25 million facility to City Bank.
NDB officials have also indicated that annual lending to Bangladesh could eventually approach $1 billion.
That would make the bank a significant additional source of development finance alongside the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, not a replacement for them.
Payments offer another, more tentative, opportunity. Bangladesh’s experience with rupee-based settlement with India shows the potential of local-currency trade to reduce transaction costs and foreign-exchange pressures.
BRICS efforts to develop alternative payment arrangements could widen those options further. But the benefits should not be overstated.
The Taka is not freely convertible, and linking countries with very different financial and digital infrastructures is technically and institutionally difficult.
Dependence on another country’s payment or financial infrastructure could simply create a different vulnerability. For Bangladesh, the objective should therefore be greater payment flexibility, not replacing one financial dependence with another.
Beyond finance, deeper engagement with BRICS countries could create opportunities in energy, agriculture, manufacturing and technology.
Russia offers potential for energy cooperation, Brazil relevant expertise in agro-industry, and South Africa links to African markets. But these opportunities will not translate automatically into economic gains.
Finance does not create competitiveness; market access does not guarantee exports; and alternative payment systems cannot substitute for sound macroeconomic management.
Foreign investment delivers lasting benefits only when it expands domestic productive capacity, transfers technology and creates jobs.
For Bangladesh, weak productivity, costly logistics, a narrow export base and limited domestic value addition will determine how much of these opportunities it can capture.
These constraints will become even more important as Bangladesh prepares for LDC graduation and faces a more competitive trade environment with fewer trade preferences.
No discussion of Bangladesh and BRICS can avoid China and India. China is Bangladesh’s largest trading partner and a major source of industrial inputs and infrastructure finance, but the trade relationship is highly asymmetric.
In FY2024–25, Bangladesh imported $18.6 billion in goods from China while exporting less than $700 million, producing a deficit of nearly $18 billion, the largest Bangladesh runs with any country.
The policy challenge, however, is not simply to narrow that deficit; it is to use the relationship to build domestic value addition, diversify exports and reduce excessive vulnerability. India presents a different challenge.
It is central to Bangladesh’s connectivity and energy links, but politically sensitive, while its strategic rivalry with China adds another layer of complexity to Bangladesh’s external economic and diplomatic choices.
Bangladesh should not turn this into a choice between Beijing and Delhi, nor use one to counterbalance the other for its own sake.
The objective should be to deepen economically beneficial ties with both while ensuring that neither becomes so dominant that it constrains Bangladesh’s strategic autonomy.
The same principle should apply to relations with the United States, the European Union, Japan and the Gulf states.
This does not mean seeking equidistance: geography, history and the scale of existing trade and investment inevitably give some relationships greater weight than others.
The aim is diversification, not equal distance, broadening Bangladesh’s range of partners so that it can negotiate on merit, strengthen its bargaining position and avoid excessive dependence on any single relationship.
Ultimately, no external partner should become so indispensable that Dhaka loses the ability to say no, negotiate better terms or walk away from a bad deal.
This points to a broader shift—from alignment to managed interdependence: cooperating where interests converge, diversifying where vulnerabilities are high, and preserving the freedom to pursue different partnerships on different issues.
Bangladesh does not need to choose between BRICS and the West, or between China and India. It needs sufficient economic and diplomatic options to engage each on its own merits.
BRICS should therefore be judged by what it delivers, not by its symbolism. If it provides additional development finance, wider markets, technology or more flexible payment options, engagement is worthwhile. But the same test should apply to every external partnership.
Bangladesh should diversify its partnerships, not its dependencies—using the NDB where its financing is competitive, exploring local-currency settlement selectively, and expanding into BRICS markets while maintaining its traditional development and export relationships. Yet external opportunities will yield little without stronger domestic capacity.
Productivity, logistics, governance and export competitiveness—not diplomatic positioning—will determine whether greater strategic space abroad translates into durable gains at home.
The essential test is simple: does a partnership expand Bangladesh’s economic opportunities and strategic choices, or does it create a new form of dependence? Bangladesh does not need to choose sides in a changing global order. It needs more options—and the economic strength and policy discipline to use them.
(The author is a Professor of Economics at the International University of Business Agriculture and Technology (IUBAT), Dhaka. He can be reached at golam.
grasul@gmail.com)
