What else can the watching world expect from the fourth summit of the Brics countries, wrapping up on Friday (30 March 2012) in New Delhi?

The first outcome is already evident: Brics' demand for greater voting rights in the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Without this, the summit declared, its members would withhold additional funds the IMF needs to combat the EU debt crisis (or, more accurately, to limited EU banks' exposure).

The move is the first coordinated action, backed with concrete pressure, by the five Brics members to push for major changes to governance of multi-lateral forums - including the UN, where Brazil, India and South Africa are all bidding to join Russia and China as permanent Security Council members. It is unlikely to be the last.

Beyond multi-lateral forum reform, this Brics summit is moving fast on re-organisation of global trade. Led by Brazil, Brics wants resolution of the Doha round of trade talks, particularly the thorny Non-Agricultural Market Access (Nama) negotiations. The countries lead the developing world in demanding improved access for their manufacturers to lucrative Western markets. Internally, Brazil and South Africa also want their Brics partners to lead by example and buy more intermediate, rather than just primary, goods from them.

China and South Africa has made progress towards this goal, identifying 10 categories of goods to trade, ranging from processed foods to specialist automotive components. South Africa has already held a trade exhibition around these goods in China.

Equally exciting are two discussions set to take place: the replacement of the dollar with Brics countries' currencies for trade, and the establishment of the South Bank, the developing nation's own development bank.

The move away from the dollar may initially only be symbolic, since trade between the five countries accounts for 8% of global trade. But it may well become technically and strategically significant. In the interim, a question to be answered is how to accurately undertake price comparisons across the Brics. If an item costs 100 Renminbi in Beijing, 100 Rupees in New Delhi and 100 Real in Sao Paulo, how will you know which is the cheapest without having to convert three different exchange rates? The dollar makes such comparisons easy. But even moving away from the dollar, a Brics (or emerging economies) reserve currency will still be needed, and the most likely of the currencies is China's. Establishing this comes with its own challenges, not least because it is and subject to heavy political control and is continually devalued to aid Chinese exports and economic growth.

Finally, as long as South Africa's major commodity exports are priced in dollars, the rand can never properly be extricated from the greenback.

Despite these challenges, the move to wean the developing world from the currencies of the North (including the struggling Euro) is encouraging.

As for the South Bank, it is an idea whose time has come, sending a powerful message to the rest of the world that Brics has the fiscal muscle to lend to each other, enabling them to take a step back from the dollar-dependent world economy. The question is where the money will come from and how it is to be used. The most obvious source of seed funding is, again, Chinese reserves, but South Africa's own reserves of US$5- billion create scope for the country to punch above its weight at the Brics table. Brazil's own development bank, BNDES, provides both some resources and a model for how such a bank might function.

Ultimately, what matters will be what the development funds are used for and the return expected. The most obvious area in which China can make an impact is offering cheaper loans to fund Africa's infrastructure development, including South Africa's R3,2-trillion eight-year programme. The bank could also fund the ambitious space programme that South Africa, India and Brazil have committed to through Ibsa, their trilateral bloc which predates Brics.

In South Africa, the loans could counteract the pension fund industry's inertia towards the target of investing 5% of its assets in social infrastructure. Cheaper Chinese or Brics loans will have the effect of displacing lending by the West from the lucrative African infrastructure market. African countries will not mind that, but the loans must still reflect the risk premium associated with operating in volatile spaces. Funding a multiple product pipeline from Durban to Johannesburg is not the same proposition as a similar pipeline in the Niger Delta.

The countries may also find that they have reached a point where they need to establish a permanent secretariat to continue work in between summits. That is something we may not see at this summit, but which BRICS will obviously need if it is to meet half its ambitions for the new world economic order it seeks. Here the bloc may have something to learn from Ibsa, which has had to beat a similar path over the last few years.