巴西总统驳斥唱衰金砖国家之声

With economic issues expected to top the agenda of the BRICS summit in Brazil, economists say the bloc still remains a dynamic economy as a whole, and has great potential for inter-bloc trade.

CRI's CAO Yuwei has more.

Many Western observers have recently come to question the bloc's unity and vitality after the recent economic headwinds the five nations have faced.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has rebutted the argument of a broken BRICS.

She says the temporary difficulty developing countries are facing is a result of the global economic crisis.

"In the past months, there was an ideology among some western media that the developing countries cannot play an important role in the world economy any more. I believe it is a wrong assessment. Since 2008, many developed countries were affected with an economic downturn, and the developing countries started to feel the impact in some 3 or 4 years later."

The BRICS countries collectively represent almost 42 percent of world population, a quarter of global income, and 17 percent of world trade.

Despite slowing growth among the emerging economies, experts say the group remains a driving force on a global scale.

Cui Li is managing director of China Macro Research at Goldman Sachs.

"As the biggest emerging markets, they will still be quite important. The last few years, the BRICS still contributed close to half of global growth. So that is a lot in terms of how many these countries are contributing, right? So they're very important entities."

BRICS countries now account for 21 percent of global economic output and have contributed more than 50 percent of world economic growth in the past decade.

Dr. Chen Mo, research fellow at Emerging Markets Institute of Beijing Normal University, Says there is still a lot of room for trade cooperation among BRICS countries to grow.

"There is potential for further development everywhere. I can name it. For example, the Siberia part of Russia is rich in minerals, rich in land that can be farmed. Countries like Brazil and China can provide both manpower and technology to do it. And while India is lacking infrastructure in power, in rail roads, in education, other countries can certainly help."

Official figures show that trade within the BRICS group surged over 3-billion US dollars by early 2013 and may reach 500 (billion) US dollars by 2015.

For CRI, I'm Cao Yuwei.