Prime Minister Narendra Modi Thursday chaired the 13th BRICS summit via video conferencing, saying that it was "an influential voice for rising economies". Also present at the virtual summit were leaders of China, Russia, Brazil and South Africa. 

“BRICS has made many achievements in the last one and a half decades. Today we are an influential voice for the emerging economies of the world,” Prime Minister Modi said in his address.

The meeting is being attended by Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. The theme for the Summit is ‘BRICS@15: Intra-BRICS cooperation for continuity, consolidation and consensus’.

This is the second time Prime Minister Modi is chairing the BRICS Summit. Earlier he had chaired the Goa Summit in 2016.

The BRICS summit comes in wake of the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, and AFghanistan would loom large on the BRICS agenda, given the different perceptions of the countries involved on the evolving situation in Kabul.