FM to represent Thailand in Brics Plus meet in Kazan

Thailand will join the 4th Brics Plus Summit in Russia, though the country will be represented by Foreign Affairs Minister Maris Sangiamposa instead of Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, it was announced yesterday.
According to Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Nikorn Balankura yesterday, the country will take part in the meeting, which will be held from Oct 22-24 in Kazan, Tatarstan, after it was invited to attend by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The fourth edition of the Brics Plus Summit will see the bloc’s founding members — namely Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — welcome Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as new members.
Mr Putin also invited over two dozen other countries that have expressed their interest in joining the group, including Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam, and Kazakhstan.
This year’s meeting will be held under the topic “Brics and the Global South: Building a Better World Together”.
“This meeting will be a good opportunity for Thailand to reiterate its aspirations to elevate its relationship with Brics,” he added, noting the country summited its Brics membership application in June.
Meanwhile, Russia is seeking to convince Brics countries to build an alternative platform for international payments that would be immune to Western sanctions.
Mr Putin is keen to build up Brics as a powerful counterweight to the West in global politics and trade. The proposal will be presented for a new payments system based on a network of commercial banks linked to each other through the Brics central banks, according to a document prepared by Russia’s finance ministry and central bank, distributed to journalists ahead of the summit.
The system would use blockchain technology to store and transfer digital tokens backed by national currencies. This would then allow those currencies to be easily and securely exchanged, bypassing the need for the dollar.