INTERVENTION BY

THE HONOURABLE DATO’ SERI ANWAR IBRAHIM PRIME MINISTER OF MALAYSIA

AT THE 18^TH BRICS SUMMIT NEW DELHI, INDIA

13 SEPTEMBER 2026

 

 

 

Thank you, Chair, for giving Malaysia the floor. Excellencies,

Malaysia thanks India for convening this timely session.

 

 

We meet at a moment of great contradiction. Technology has rarely advanced faster. Yet for much of the developing world, economic uplift remains remote.

 

Too many countries are in debt distress, or at serious risk of it. Far too many people live in countries where more is spent on interest than on teaching the young or tending the sick.

 

No nation should be forced to choose between honouring its debts and honouring its obligations to its people.

 

The financing must be fit for purpose. Meeting basic needs and providing public goods should not leave countries carrying debts they cannot sustain. Commercial capital also has an important role, provided it is deployed on sound and sustainable terms including the initiatives, the new development bank and mechanism to local currency settlements which is important for us to proceed without delay and to my mind the potential of Islamic capital markets.

 

May I humbly reiterate that we need to jointly act through concrete actions, to dismantle the unfair trading practice, we need to share our development experiment, experience with fellow developing countries, the technical corporations, the training in new fields of technology including semiconductors and artificial intelligence.

 

The green transition must reflect different national circumstances. Countries will move at different speeds and by different paths, depending on their circumstances and stage of development. We need to invest in technologies such as carbon capture, utilisation and storage as part of our own transition.

 

 

BRICS offers crucial geoeconomic advantages in more ways than the term ‘utility’ suggests. BRICS generates the critical mass from a vast integrated market, opening up crucial opportunities for trade diversification, and more significantly enabling member economies to be weaned off their over reliance on traditional western markets. At the end of the day, the synergies that are created, exploited, and optimally utilised will serve as an impetus for the generation of economic growth and shared prosperity.

 

Excellencies,

 

We cannot speak of inclusive growth and prosperity while war drives energy prices higher and threatens the sea lanes on which our economies depend. The aggression perpetrated by Israel in the Middle East has already reached far beyond its protagonists. Countries with no part in this war are paying through higher inflation and uncertainty.

 

Malaysia’s position is clear. Sovereignty must be respected, civilians protected and the arteries of the global economy kept out of the battlefield. Those with the greatest capacity to shape events bear a particular responsibility to prevent further escalation.

 

 

 

Malaysia hopes BRICS will say plainly and unequivocally what should never have needed saying: that occupation, or settler

colonialism or even more in point ‘settler terrorism’ cannot become destiny and no life weighs less for where it is lived.

 

Excellencies,

 

 

BRICS can widen our choices and strengthen our capacity to shape the world around us. But influence is not an end in itself. It matters only if we are prepared to use it in service of the principles we profess.

 

For Malaysia, strategic autonomy means the freedom to choose our own course, and the courage to stand by that choice when it matters. As a Partner Country, Malaysia hopes to contribute in that spirit.

 

Thank you.