BRICS 2026 did not hand India’s chemical industry a tariff concession or a new market overnight, but it did something less common: the New Delhi Declaration, adopted on 12 September 2026, names chemical production as an area for joint work. In paragraph 70, leaders agree that chemical plants across the bloc should become more digital, more sustainable and more innovative, and they give that task to the BRICS Working Group on Chemical Industry; the paragraphs around it add commitments on industrial skills, product standards, value chains, customs and finance for small exporters.
For companies that buy or ship industrial amines, those commitments land in very practical places. Amines feed gas-treating units, crop-protection formulations, pharmaceutical syntheses, epoxy flooring, boiler water programmes and rubber compounds, and each of those end uses is touched by a different part of the declaration. This guide from Chelora Amines reads the declaration from the angle of the amines supply chain: what the text actually says, which customer industries it reaches, what stays unchanged, and what purchase and export teams can sensibly do in the months ahead.
What the declaration puts in motion
- A brief for the Working Group on Chemical Industry
- Industry 4.0 support through the BRICS Centre for Industrial Competencies
- Talks between national standards bodies
- Customs cooperation and digitised trade paperwork
- Credit principles and invoice discounting for exporting MSMEs
What it leaves untouched
- Import duties on amines, in India and in every member market
- Dangerous-goods classification, packing and labelling
- REACH, CBAM and sanctions obligations
- India’s foreign exchange rules
- Your SDS, COA and grade specifications
Chemicals in the New Delhi Declaration at a glance
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Summit | 18th BRICS Summit, New Delhi, 12–13 September 2026, under India’s chairship |
| Direct chemical mention | Paragraph 70: a more digital, sustainable and innovative chemical sector, pursued via the Working Group on Chemical Industry |
| Industrial support | Paragraph 72: BRICS Centre for Industrial Competencies with UNIDO; India Centre for BRICS Industrial Competencies established |
| Standards | Paragraph 118: progress towards an MoU between BRICS national standards bodies |
| Value chains | Paragraphs 84 and 86: resilient supply chains, higher-value manufacturing, GVC Action Plan 2026–2030 |
| MSMEs | Paragraphs 71 and 85: first BRICS SME Forum, credit assessment principles, Jaipur Consensus on invoice discounting |
| What did not change | No tariff cuts, no free trade agreement, no common currency |
Where does the chemical industry appear in the New Delhi Declaration?
The chemical industry appears by name in paragraph 70 of the New Delhi Declaration, and indirectly in more than a dozen other paragraphs on industry, trade, agriculture, health and energy. The direct mention is short, but its placement tells you how BRICS now treats the sector.
Paragraph 70 sits inside a section on industrial cooperation. It notes that BRICS runs seven specialised working groups under that track and names three of them: the Photovoltaic Industry Working Group, the Intelligent Manufacturing and Robotics Working Group, and the BRICS Working Group on Chemical Industry. In other words, chemicals are grouped with solar manufacturing and smart factories as an industrial capability the members want to build together, rather than being treated only as goods that cross borders.
Anyone who wants to read the original wording can find the full text of the New Delhi Declaration on the Prime Minister of India’s website.
Which amine-consuming industries are touched by BRICS 2026?
BRICS 2026 touches at least four large groups of amine users: energy and gas processing, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, and infrastructure with water treatment. Each is linked to a separate part of the declaration, so the effect on the amines supply chain depends on which customers a supplier serves.
Energy paragraphs
Gas treating and carbon capture
The energy paragraphs accept that fossil fuels will keep an important place in the energy mix of developing economies while calling for cleaner transitions, and they encourage joint work on standards for low-emission hydrogen. Both points matter to alkanolamine users. Monoethanolamine, diethanolamine and diisopropanolamine are the classic solvents for stripping carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide from natural gas, refinery streams and synthesis gas, and MEA remains the reference solvent for capturing carbon dioxide from flue gas. A bloc that expects gas processing to continue and wants to grow carbon markets is, in effect, a steady market for amine-based gas treating.
Paragraph 60
Agriculture and crop protection
Paragraph 60 looks forward to discussions on easing intra-BRICS trade in agricultural and food production inputs through resilient, non-discriminatory supply chains, and it names fertiliser shortages as a risk to food security. Several amines sit upstream of crop protection. Isopropylamine is used to make the isopropylamine salt found in many glyphosate formulations and, with ethylamine, goes into triazine herbicides such as atrazine. If intra-BRICS trade in agro-inputs becomes easier, Indian formulators and technical manufacturers serving BRICS markets will need a dependable flow of these amines behind them.
Paragraph 52
Pharmaceuticals and medical products
Paragraph 52 encourages BRICS medical products regulators to extend their cooperation to all member countries and welcomes a joint GxP white paper on good regulatory practice. For amine suppliers, this points to tighter documentation rather than new demand. Piperazine is a building block for several active ingredients, including fluoroquinolone antibiotics, while triethylamine and morpholine are common bases and intermediates in drug synthesis. Pharmaceutical customers that export to regulated BRICS markets will expect their amine suppliers to hold grade, batch and change-control records that stand up to an audit.
Transport and urbanisation
Infrastructure, coatings and water
The declaration welcomes the outcomes of the transport ministers’ meeting in Nagpur and the BRICS Urbanisation Forum, with commitments on transport infrastructure, housing, and water and sanitation services. Construction and water are large amine markets. Ethylenediamine, triethylenetetramine and isophorone diamine cure the epoxy systems used in industrial flooring, protective coatings and adhesives; triethanolamine is widely used in cement grinding aids; and morpholine, cyclohexylamine and octadecylamine protect steam and condensate systems in boilers from corrosion. Infrastructure spending across member economies therefore reaches amine demand through coatings, cement and utilities.
How could BRICS industrial and standards cooperation help Indian amine producers?
BRICS industrial and standards cooperation could help Indian amine producers mainly through technology adoption, shared specifications and cleaner trade paperwork, although each depends on follow-through by national agencies.
Paragraph 72 notes that the BRICS Centre for Industrial Competencies, created jointly with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), is now working with manufacturers, small firms included, on Industry 4.0 and digital production methods. India has also opened a national counterpart, the India Centre for BRICS Industrial Competencies. For amine plants and packing units, the useful applications are unglamorous but valuable: automated batch records, online monitoring of reactors and distillation columns, tank-level and dispatch tracking, and digital certificates of analysis that match the physical batch.
Paragraph 118 welcomes progress towards a memorandum of understanding between the national standards bodies of BRICS members, including India’s Bureau of Indian Standards. In amines, the same product can be sold as commercial, laboratory or analytical grade, with different limits for assay, water content and colour. Closer contact between standards bodies will not merge those grades, but over time it can make it easier for a buyer in one member country to read and trust a specification written in another. Paragraph 87 adds support for digitising trade documentation and for using Special Economic Zones to build integrated value chains, which fits the direction Indian customs and ports are already taking.
Write the full name, never the abbreviation
Abbreviations cause more held consignments and wrong deliveries in amines than most buyers expect. TEA can mean triethanolamine or triethylamine, and DEA can mean diethanolamine or diethylamine. These pairs fall under different customs headings (2922 for amino-alcohols and 2921 for other amines) and have different hazard profiles, so always write the full chemical name and CAS number on purchase orders, invoices and shipping documents.
What do trade, payment and customs commitments mean for amine shipments?
For amine shipments, the trade, payment and customs commitments of BRICS 2026 change nothing today but point towards smoother clearance and cheaper settlement on member routes over the next few years. Duties, dangerous-goods rules and documentation requirements remain exactly as they were before the summit.
On trade rules, the declaration restates support for a reformed WTO with a working two-tier dispute settlement system (paragraph 20) and criticises one-sided tariff increases and trade barriers that break WTO rules (paragraph 21). On payments, paragraph 90 asks the BRICS Payment Task Force to keep working on fast, low-cost cross-border payments and local-currency settlement, while noting that there is no one-size-fits-all approach. On customs, paragraph 99 records convergence on a BRICS customs cooperation agreement, a BRICS AEO Action Plan 2026 for Authorised Economic Operators, and a yearly coordinated enforcement exercise by member customs services.
Two further details are relevant to chemicals. Paragraph 42 raises concern about money laundering through the misuse of invoicing, so buyers and banks can be expected to look harder at price, quantity and description on chemical invoices. And paragraph 108 opposes carbon border adjustment mechanisms such as the EU’s CBAM; for now, amines are not among the goods CBAM covers, but exporters to Europe should still follow the proposed extension of its product list.
Nothing in the declaration is binding on a shipment
Dangerous-goods regulations, sanctions laws, EU CBAM and REACH, and India’s foreign exchange rules all apply exactly as before. Many amines are flammable, corrosive or toxic, and some aromatic amines such as MOCA and 4,4’-methylenedianiline carry serious long-term health hazards, so every consignment must still be classified, packed, labelled and documented under the rules that apply to it, with the SDS as the reference for handling. Before switching invoice currency or opening a new destination market, check the position with your authorised dealer bank and a qualified compliance adviser.
How does BRICS 2026 support chemical MSMEs and traders?
BRICS 2026 supports chemical MSMEs mainly through better access to trade finance and new forums for small-business cooperation, both of which matter in a sector where much of the distribution, blending and packing work is done by small firms.
Paragraph 71 commends India for hosting the first BRICS SME Forum in Agra and welcomes a Framework for Cooperation in the SME Working Group. Paragraph 85 goes further on money. It recognises that affordable finance is the main bottleneck for MSMEs in international trade, welcomes guiding principles for credit assessment of export-oriented MSMEs that use wider data sources to reduce information gaps, and welcomes the Jaipur Consensus to study an invoice discounting mechanism among members. The word “study” matters: this is a first step, not a live product.
For a chemical trader or small amine blender, the direction of the Jaipur Consensus and the credit principles is still encouraging. Credit models that look at shipment history, digital invoices and payment records, rather than only property collateral, suit businesses whose main assets are stock and receivables. Export-oriented MSMEs that keep clean digital records now will be first in line when banks start using such frameworks.
Is BRICS 2026 a turning point for India’s chemical industry?
BRICS 2026 is better seen as a milestone than a turning point for India’s chemical industry. It marks twenty years of BRICS cooperation and places chemicals on the industrial agenda of an eleven-member bloc, but the direction of India’s chemical industry is still set by feedstock, capacity, regulation and customer demand.
The chemistry itself has a long history. In the mid-nineteenth century August Wilhelm von Hofmann described amines as derivatives of ammonia in which hydrogen atoms are replaced by organic groups, the basis of today’s primary, secondary and tertiary classification. Charles-Adolphe Wurtz first prepared ethanolamines in 1860, but they became industrial chemicals only after ethylene oxide was produced at scale in the twentieth century. In 1930 Robert Bottoms patented the use of alkanolamine solutions to absorb acid gases, the idea behind almost every amine gas-treating unit operating today.
BRICS grew in parallel with the modern Indian chemical industry. Brazil, Russia, India and China began meeting as a group in 2006, held their first leaders’ summit in 2009, and were joined by South Africa in 2010, before the wider expansion of 2024 and 2025. Over the same period India’s chemical sector moved from supplying mainly its domestic market towards exports, supported by clusters in Gujarat and Maharashtra. India produces several amine families at home and imports others, and some BRICS members are large producers of ethylene-based chemicals. That mix means BRICS 2026 affects Indian amine users both as buyers of imported material and as exporters of downstream products.
What should amine buyers and exporters do after BRICS 2026?
Amine buyers and exporters should use BRICS 2026 as a prompt to tidy up specifications, documentation and supplier options, because those are the areas where the declaration’s commitments will eventually be felt. The six steps below keep the effort practical.
- Name every amine in full, with its CAS number.Replace abbreviations such as TEA, DEA and IPA on purchase orders, invoices and labels. This single habit prevents wrong deliveries, customs queries and mismatched SDS documents.
- Match grades to the destination’s requirements.Pharmaceutical, agrochemical and water-treatment customers in different countries work to different specifications and regulators. Confirm the grade, assay, water content and impurity limits the end customer needs before quoting.
- Check your dangerous-goods readiness.Make sure packaging, hazard labels, SDS versions and transport documents are correct for each product and route. Faster customs processes only help consignments whose paperwork is already right.
- Qualify a second source without losing control of the specification.If you depend on one importer or one plant for a critical amine, trial an alternative supplier’s sample against your current material. Keep both approved so that supply shocks do not stop production.
- Start collecting sustainability data.Record energy use, packaging and waste for your main products. Customers under carbon, packaging and extended producer responsibility pressure will ask for this data long before any rule forces it.
- Follow implementation, not announcements.Track notifications from DGFT, CBIC and the Reserve Bank of India, programmes run by the India Centre for BRICS Industrial Competencies, future BRICS SME Forums, and any pilot arising from the Jaipur Consensus. Act when a mechanism is actually open to businesses.
What are chemical buyers asking about BRICS 2026?
Does the New Delhi Declaration mention the chemical industry?
Yes. Paragraph 70 of the New Delhi Declaration, which BRICS leaders agreed on the opening day of the September 2026 summit, recognises that chemical manufacturing across member countries should become more digital, more sustainable and more innovative, and ties that goal to the BRICS Working Group on Chemical Industry. The mention is brief and does not create a fund or trade concession for chemicals. Other paragraphs on industrial competencies, standards, value chains, customs, MSME finance, agriculture and health also affect chemical companies, including suppliers and users of industrial amines.
What is the BRICS Working Group on Chemical Industry?
The BRICS Working Group on Chemical Industry is one of seven specialised working groups under BRICS industrial cooperation, alongside groups such as the Photovoltaic Industry Working Group and the Intelligent Manufacturing and Robotics Working Group. In 2026 the New Delhi Declaration gave it a clear brief: help member countries modernise chemical manufacturing through digital tools, cleaner processes and new technology. It is a government-level forum for exchanging policy and practice, not a trade body, so its effect on individual companies will come through national programmes and initiatives.
Will BRICS 2026 reduce import duties on amines in India?
No. BRICS 2026 did not produce a free trade agreement or any tariff reduction, and each member country continues to set its own import duties. Duties on amines entering India, and on Indian amines entering other BRICS markets, are unchanged by the summit. The declaration does push for WTO reform and criticises one-sided trade barriers, but any real change in duty rates would have to come through separate trade agreements or national policy decisions.
What is the BRICS Centre for Industrial Competencies?
The BRICS Centre for Industrial Competencies is a platform set up with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization to help manufacturing companies in BRICS countries, including SMEs, adopt Industry 4.0 and advanced digital production technologies. The New Delhi Declaration records that the centre is now running and that India has opened its own national counterpart, the India Centre for BRICS Industrial Competencies. For chemical and amine producers, relevant areas include digital batch records, process monitoring, predictive maintenance and quality systems, depending on the programmes the centres actually offer.
Are amines affected by the EU CBAM?
Not today. The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism charges for embedded emissions on a short list of carbon-intensive goods, mainly steel, aluminium, cement, fertilisers, hydrogen and power, and industrial amines are outside that list. Brussels is negotiating a longer product list that could apply from 2028, and whether organic chemicals should eventually be covered remains an open question in EU policy circles. BRICS leaders criticised such border levies in paragraph 108, but a summit text has no force in EU law, so amine exporters to Europe should keep an eye on the scope.
Does Chelora Amines support export orders?
Yes. As an amines supplier in India, Chelora Amines supports export orders alongside road dispatch to plants across India. Share the product, grade, quantity and destination country, and the team will pack the order in UN-specification containers with the correct hazard labelling, prepare the export paperwork, and send a COA and SDS with every batch. Samples and trial quantities can be arranged for most products, and a complete enquiry usually receives a quotation within 24 hours.