Putin asks BRICS to build its own insurance pool and a grain exchange
In Delhi he said intra-BRICS trade is $1.2 trillion and that a payments rail, a reinsurer and a grain platform would let members work around outside pressure. The New Delhi Declaration already backs more work on the grain idea. NDB projects, he said, total $140 billion.
New Delhi2 min read
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Vladimir Putin used the closing session of the 18th BRICS summit in New Delhi on Sunday to push three Russian files: a payments, depository and clearance rail inside the group, a reinsurance mechanism, and a grain exchange. Intra-BRICS trade, he said, is $1.2 trillion. The tools, he said, would let members move capital, labour and technology without depending on outside pressure.
The pressure he means is specific. After the invasion of Ukraine, the G7, the European Union and the United Kingdom barred Western firms from insuring ships that carry Russian crude above a price cap. That rule hit the tanker market and, behind it, the grain market, because the same clubs write hull and cargo cover. A BRICS reinsurer would be an attempt to write that cover inside the group. Putin did not name a capital figure or a domicile.
The grain exchange is older. Russia tabled a framework at the BRICS trade ministers' meeting in Jaipur in August. Businessline reported last October that Moscow told partners a BRICS Grain Exchange could save them $2.5 billion a year against Chicago and European platforms it calls biased. The New Delhi Declaration adopted on 12 September already said members would keep working on the platform and could later add other farm products. BRICS countries account for about 42 percent of global farm output and for most of the world's small farmers.
Putin also praised the New Development Bank, which he said is handling $140 billion of projects. That number is a stock of approvals and disbursements, not new cash announced on Sunday. It is the one BRICS financial organ that already exists, has a president and writes loans. The payments rail and the reinsurer do not. They are design documents until a host country puts capital and law behind them.
The political use is obvious. A week of tanker fires near Hormuz and a Western price cap on Russian oil make insurance a wartime input. Grain prices move when the Black Sea is dangerous and when West Asia burns. A summit that could not write hard language on those wars could still write a sentence about a trading screen and a cover note. India, as chair, let the sentence into the declaration without promising to host the exchange.
What to watch is smaller than the speech. Does a working group leave Delhi with a legal outline for the reinsurer. Does any member commit a first-loss layer. Does the grain platform get a matching engine and a warehouse list, or only another communique. Until those items exist, the $2.5 billion saving is a Russian estimate and the $1.2 trillion trade figure is a stock that already moves on SWIFT and on Western cover when it can get it.
Putin left Delhi after the outreach session. The three proposals travel with him. They will return at the next trade ministers' meeting. They will matter on the day a BRICS cargo is denied a London slip and someone in the group can actually write the risk. That day has not arrived. Sunday was the ask.
