Russia presents structure of BRICS Grain Exchange
MOSCOW. Aug 11 (Interfax) - Russia presented the structure of the BRICS Grain Exchange and how it will work at the 16th meeting of the organization's economy and foreign trade ministers in Jaipur last week, the Economic Development Ministry said in a press release after the meeting.
Russia proposed to create the BRICS Grain Exchange as a unified digital trading platform where producers and buyers of agricultural crops could deal with one another directly without external exchange intermediaries. The platform will reflect the actual balance of supply and demand within BRICS, and enable countries to retain control over their own commodity flows, the ministry said.
"The reduction of the number of intermediaries will directly influence the attractiveness of prices for all parties. Today, every additional link in the supply chain builds in its own margin. As a result, the farmer gets less for their product, while the buyer pays more than they would with direct settlements. In this context the BRICS Grain Exchange is an opportunity for our countries to determine the fair value of their products themselves," Deputy Economic Development Minister Vladimir Ilyichev said in the press release.
BRICS countries expressed their positions regarding the specifics of national markets and readiness to implement this initiative in the course of the discussion of this issue.
The creation of a BRICS Grain Exchange was proposed at the end of 2023 by Russia's Union of Grain Exporters and Producers. President Vladimir Putin supported the initiative in the spring of 2024 and said later that such an exchange could eventually evolve into a full-fledged commodity exchange.
The declaration adopted at the BRICS summit in Kazan in the fall of 2024 spoke about the creation of a BRICS grain/commodity exchange and its subsequent development, including to encompass other sectors of agriculture.
In April 2025, the Russian initiative was officially supported by BRICS agriculture ministers. In June 2026, Russia's Economic Development Ministry told Interfax that the conceptual model for the operation of the exchange had been prepared, and that common approaches to the technological requirements and functioning of this trading platform were being worked out with a number of partners.
The Union of Grain Exporters and Producers estimated that trading of agricultural and related products on this exchange could eventually exceed $1 trillion.
