Bluepaper: BRIC Nations Not All About Economic Performance

Brazil, Russia, India and China, a.k.a. the BRIC nations, have Anders Aslund over at FP Magazine wondering what Russia's doing in the group. His questionable premise: that Russia's value to BRIC is its economic performance. Not necessarily.

BRIC heads of state have been meeting, not just their foreign ministries or top business players. One would expect geopolitics to come up if nothing else, to save valuable time on forwarding mutual agendas. Russia brings a large HUMINT and human security network to BRIC's table where information is an asset. It also has immense natural resources that could benefit BRIC's rising political economies with price limits on oil and gas in exchange for loans as was done in contract with China. Why not do the same for others with cash to lend?

Aslund questions why Russia has not been investing in its infrastructure, and criticizes the inefficiency of nationalized corporations such as Gazprom and Rosneft, whose inefficiencies he says are worsening. Russian power-brokers, a.k.a. the Putin government, nonplussed by the financial crisis, likely leapt at huge cash-influxes from lender nations while short-selling oil, gas and armaments in long range contracts.

There is less incentive to upgrade oil and gas infrastructure where the country is locked into less profitable supply contracts.