Egypt may one day join the BRICS grouping of growing economies, President Mohamed Morsi told the Hindu, an Indian English language daily, in an interview published on Monday.
“I am hoping BRICS would one day become E-BRICS where E stands for Egypt. I hope E-BRICS would emerge when we start moving the economy,” the president was quoted as saying by the South Asian paper.
BRICS is an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and recent member South Africa, used to designate a bloc of large, fast-growing economies which were initially projected to overtake the current major global economies in the first half of the twenty first century.
Egypt’s growth rate, which had reached a peak of 7.3 percent in March 2008, plummeted to a negative 4.2 percent in March 2011, following a revolution which toppled the regime of former president Hosni Mubarak, and has since inched up to 2.2 percent in the last quarter of 2012.
The country’s foreign currency reserves, which Egypt’s Central Bank has used to prop up the Egyptian pound since the revolution, have fallen to $13.5 billion at the end of February 2013, their lowest level in fifteen years.
The Egyptian president, who is on an official visit to Pakistan then India on Monday, told the paper he favored a more prominent role for the Non Aligned Movement in countering what he described as a “unipolar world,” and would work towards this with Indian leaders during his trip.
President Morsi added that Egypt would benefit from establishing a “unique relationship” with India in developing small and medium enterprises, as well as the Arab country’s information technology industry, and national defense industry.
