On January 1, 2020, Russia's BRICS presidency began with the motto "BRICS Partnership for global stability, common security, and innovative growth".

During the Russian presidency, more than 150 events of various levels are planned, including the BRICS summit in St. Petersburg on July 21-23, as well as more than 20 meetings, including meetings of Foreign Ministers, Ministers of Finance, and the forum of small and medium-sized businesses of the SCO and BRICS regions.

At Russia's suggestion, it is planned to update the BRICS development strategy, adopted 5 years ago for the period up to 2025, in order to increase mutual trade and investment.

According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, "now we need to update and modernize this document and set new tasks for the development of industry cooperation in BRICS."

Vladimir Putin also noted that in 2019, BRICS surpassed the G7 countries in terms of GDP and purchasing power by 12%, and in 2020, the BRICS will have 50 trillion rubles – more than in the G7 countries together, which is a factor of international stability and growth of the global economy. The Russian President stressed that BRICS is not a closed Union, it supports open markets and is against any kind of protectionism.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation announced that it will continue to develop three key areas of cooperation between the BRICS countries – political, economic, and humanitarian, where special attention will be paid to interaction on international platforms, in parallel with the ongoing work within the G5 countries.

In 2020, it is planned to actively work to strengthen the potential of the New BRICS Development Bank and increase the size of the Bank's investment portfolio to $23 billion. According to Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Sergey Ryabkov, "a total of 44 investment projects worth almost 13 billion US dollars have been approved over the years of its operations," adding that the Bank is on its way to issuing bonds in the national currencies of the countries of the Association.

The integration of payment systems of the BRICS countries and the creation of an independent information exchange channel between national banks could help the stability of the banking systems of the five countries, Russian President Vladimir Putin noted earlier.