Trade, tariffs, and financial cooperation featured prominently in the New Delhi Declaration adopted at the 18th BRICS Summit, held in New Delhi on 12-13 September 2026. The Declaration highlighted continued work by the BRICS Payment Task Force on cross-border payments, with members supporting discussions on payment and messaging interoperability and the greater use of local currencies for trade settlement and investment, reducing reliance on any single reserve currency.

A particularly India-specific development was the proposal to establish a BRICS Risk Lab at the GIFT City International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) in Gujarat, with BRICS members expressing interest in taking the proposal forward, envisaging the Risk Lab as open to interested member countries. The summit also saw BRICS members place renewed emphasis on artificial intelligence and start-ups as part of India's own innovation-led growth agenda for the bloc.

Even as India hosted the summit and closed out its chairship year, the country ended its BRICS chairship period with a trade deficit of $226 billion against the bloc, a reminder that summit-level cooperation and India's own trade balance with fellow BRICS members remain two very different things. Together, these trade and finance discussions reflected BRICS' own broader ambition to build financial mechanisms independent of Western-dominated institutions, even as concrete implementation of most of these proposals remains a work in progress.