04/09/2026
BRICS is now bigger than the G7.
Not in the future. Not "soon."
Already. And it happened years ago.
📊 BRICS: 40.7% of the world economy
📊 G7: 28.4%
Measured by purchasing power — what money actually buys inside a country — the eleven BRICS states passed the G7 and never looked back.
Here's how fast it flipped 👇
In the early 1990s, the G7 held about 45% of world output. The original BRICS held 16%. It wasn't a rivalry. It was a different universe.
Then China industrialised. India became one of the fastest-growing economies on earth. Brazil expanded. Russia clawed its way back from the collapse of the 90s.
The lines crossed in 2019.
31.06% to 30.98%.
Eight hundredths of a percentage point. After two centuries of Western economic dominance, the lead changed hands — and nobody announced it.
⚡ AND THE GAP IS STILL WIDENING
🇮🇳 India: growing 6.5%
🇮🇩 Indonesia: 5%
🇨🇳 China: 4.4%
🌍 G7 average: around 1.6%
Growth like that compounds. Factories get built. Cities expand. Consumers get richer. Repeat for twenty years and the map is unrecognisable.
🛑 BUT HERE'S WHAT NOBODY ELSE WILL TELL YOU
💵 In dollars, the G7 is still far bigger. $46 trillion against $33 trillion. And dollars — not purchasing power — are what you use to buy foreign debt, settle trade and borrow on world markets.
👤 Per person, it isn't close. About $9,437 a head in BRICS. $53,623 in the G7. Six times richer.
🇨🇳 And China alone is roughly 64% of BRICS output. "BRICS overtakes the G7" is largely "China overtakes the G7" — with ten other countries in the room.
A bloc can be enormous and still be poor. BRICS is both.
❌ AND NO, THERE IS NO BRICS CURRENCY
There is no BRICS euro. No launch date. India — this year's host — has said publicly it doesn't support one, and its central bank says the payment proposals are still at the discussion stage.
Anyone telling you otherwise this week is selling something.
🏦 WHAT THEY'RE ACTUALLY BUILDING
The New Development Bank. Founded 2015, headquartered in Shanghai. Around $44 billion approved across 139 projects — railways, water systems, clean energy, housing.
Increasingly lending in members' own currencies instead of dollars, so a South African project earning rand doesn't carry dollar debt.
Plus a cross-border payments system, so Brazil and China can trade without routing through a third country's money.
None of that makes headlines. All of it changes the plumbing.
🗓️ Leaders meet in New Delhi on 12–13 September. Putin is confirmed. Beijing still hasn't said whether Xi is coming.
💬 So — should BRICS stay a loose coalition, or become a tightly coordinated bloc? Tell us below.
📌 Sources: IMF World Economic Outlook (April 2026), New Development Bank, Reuters
