South Africa is actively drawing up new economic blueprints as it seeks to expand trade and investment within the newly enlarged BRICS-plus framework.

The South African Chapter of the BRICS Business Council has wrapped up the first in a series of structured consultative dialogues focusing on global trade and financial systems.

The push comes amid persistent local trade deficits and massive shifts in international commerce.
Chairperson of the Trade and Investment Working Group Advocate Mtho Xulu, says the focus must shift toward local industrial value addition.

The South African chapter of the BRICS Business Council is pushing for local businesses to benefit from the trade bloc.
Sector experts and business leaders wrapped up high-level talks in Johannesburg to examine practical options to expand South Africa’s role in BRICS-Plus trade and financial architectures.

The strategic push comes amid growing concerns over whether the country is leveraging its membership sufficiently-especially given persistent trade deficits and a narrow export basket.

Chairperson of the Trade and Investment Working Group, Advocate Mtho Xulu, says local industries need to aggressively shift their focus toward value-addition rather than simply increasing raw production volumes.

“In most instances, we are still showing a trade deficit, meaning that we are buying more than we are selling, and also the sophistication of what we sell will still be dominated by primary goods such as raw minerals and a primary agriculture, which obviously doesn’t give us the full value of the consumption capacity of BRICS nations and the nations of the world.”

Xulu says with the shifts underway in global trade and finance, influenced also by geopolitics it is imperative to identify where the country is most vulnerable and which sectors face the greatest risk.

“You only just have to look at the condition of economies now, with the cost of energy, and then, you know, the limited negotiating power that we have on the global stage, to realise that we still have a long way to go And that long way to go can actually be shortened, infused. We need to start building one thing that we already have. And I say, it the Brics conversation It’s very strategic.”

South Africa’s total trade volume with its BRICS partners reached a massive 62 billion US dollars in 2025
However, the balance remains heavily skewed.

While South Africa exported 23.2 billion dollars worth of goods, it imported a staggering 38 billion dollars-leaving the country facing a steep trade deficit.

To bridge this gap, Xulu says specific priority sectors must be identified to drive aggressive local industrialization and push back against the raw material export trend.

“ICT, mining, Agri, are primary, and then, obviously, all that under bedded by manufacturing, which is supposed to make us very, uh, uh, uh, attractive from an industrialisation point of view, to create domestic jobs and obviously to drive investment in production and manufacturing in South Africa.”

According to Xulu, payment-system reform remains one of the most difficult negotiations, requiring coordination among finance ministers, central banks and regulators.

“Ultimately, we believe that there’s a lot of innovation from a tech base, and digital payments, at which we believe that we need to lobby our finance ministers and our central bank accounts, to start harmonising fiscal and monetary policy, to allow inter- interoperability within our deserved banks, to be able to trade simulars to local currencies and amongst ourselves as BRICS nations.”

The conversations will now move to the 18th BRICS leaders summit in India in September, China takes over the BRICS chairmanship in 2027 and then South Africa plays host in 2028.