Chinese diplomatic authorities said on Sept. 12 that member states had produced more than 60 outcome documents around the 18th BRICS summit, Huanqiu reported.

Separate from the leaders' joint declaration, the documents cover sectoral cooperation plans, agreements to set up working bodies and joint research programs, concentrated in financial settlement, science and technology, health, agriculture and people-to-people exchange.

The ministry summed up the summit by describing BRICS cooperation as standing in the front rank of what it called Global South cooperation, noting also the wider geographic spread of participants since enlargement.

BRICS began with a foreign ministers' meeting in 2006 and held its first leaders' summit in 2009. This year's meeting included a separate session reviewing two decades of cooperation.

Among working areas, settlement cooperation has been seen as slow going because institutional arrangements differ widely between members. Expanding local-currency settlement and building information-sharing systems recur on the agenda.

Health and agriculture tend to reach agreement more quickly. Cooperation on seed and vaccine research and the exchange of food stockpile information are cited as examples.

China will prepare the next summit as chair in 2027. How many of the adopted documents carry stated implementation timetables is likely to be a checkpoint at that meeting.