President Abdelmadjid Tebboune will not be attending the BRICS heads of state summit which will be held in Johannesburg in South Africa on 22-24 August. Algeria is invited and minister of Finance Laaziz Faid will be representing president Tebboune at the summit from which Algeria holds a lot of expectations.

The minister of Finance has confirmed he will be taking part in the BRICS summit as a representative of president Tebboune. Mr. Faid said so Sunday, August 20 before boarding the inaugural flight of the new Air Algérie Algiers-Johannesburg line.

Algeria is a candidate to join the BRICS group. The president talks about it every chance he gets. During his latest press meeting, on August 5, 2023, he nevertheless stated that, as a first step, Algeria will be a candidate for an observing member status before it can aim for full membership.

“We agreed that accession will start with a first step, that of an observing member state”, Tebboune specified, while revealing that BRICS members have not yet decided on expanding the group to include new members. The 5 BRICS countries have not agreed upon the criteria to accept new members.

Besides,n and according to the words of South Africa’s roving ambassador for Asia and BRICS, Anil Sookal, who spoke on the subject, expanding BRICS to include new members is not explicitly mentioned on the summit’s agenda.

According to the same source, on the first day of the summit, Tuesday, August 22, there will be a business forum in which BRICS leaders will meet in closed proceedings. The second day will see three work sessions. During the first one, BRICS leaders and 10 representatives from each delegation will debate, also in closed proceedings, questions related to security, finance and economy.

The second session will be open and will be dedicated to debates between business councils as well as to examining the alliance between business women and the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB). The closing ceremony will be held on Thursday, August 24.

President Tebboune has recently announced that Algeria has applied to acquire shares in the NDB. Algeria has decided to commit 1.5$ billion.