INDIA’S WORLD : Nov 11, 2019
11TH BRICS SUMMIT
•This year theme of BRICS is ‘Economic Growth for an Innovative Future.’
•The BRICS countries are Brazil, the Russian Federation, India, China and South Africa.
•BRICS majorly focuses on spheres of political, social-economic coordination in which member countries have identified business opportunities, economic complementarities and areas of Corporation.
•Leaders of five nations are also expected to discuss issues like the fight against organised crime, counter-terrorism, money laundering, scientific technical cooperation and digital economy.
•China’s economy is growing at 6% whereas India’s economy is growing on 5%+ but if we look at other 3 economies, they are doing pretty bad. Russia is close to 1%, Brazil and South Africa less than 1%.
• Russia geopolitically is very important country.
• All the five countries have different political systems, different priorities but on certain issues they come together. Broader issues like climate change, sustainable development goals, international terrorism, the countries are trying to get some kind of Non-Western agenda.
•This 11th Summit would talk about future innovation, digital economy and counterterrorism etc.
•India has Russia-India-China mechanism, IBSA- India Brazil South Africa mechanism at foreign minister level.
•Agenda is about two important reports which will be submitted at the Summit.
- Report of new Development Bank, BRICS Bank.
- Report of BRICS Business Alliance.
•BRICS countries among them have only 17% of World Trade.
• BRICS Business Alliance must focus on what can be done between the large economies to arrange complementarities to open the doors.
• Brazil and India have almost no real business relationship, on the other hand Brazil and Russia also never had business relationships.
2 •Within the BRICS, China dominates because China is bigger in GDP in trade terms that all of BRICS countries put together, this makes difficult for countries like India and sometime Russia to handle.
• All of BRICS countries trade more with China than any of them do with each other.
• Trade within the BRICS is basically a spoken hub.
•Biggest problem is to put bricks together geopolitically.
• In 2020, India moving little more clearly towards Latin America, we had some high profile visits too.
•BRICS was originally started as an economic idea which is now becoming a coordination point for non-economic issues.
•Two significant non-economic issues are:-
1)Coordination on terrorism and Counter Terrorism and
2) Reformed multilateralism.
•Last 6 to 7 declarations which has come from BRICS meeting are more than hundred paragraphs means there is a possibility the countries feel they can work together in many areas.
•Counter Terrorism and multilateralism are important to India because dealing with terrorism is India’s top agenda.
•BRICS joint working group on terror, five subcommittees will set up:-
1) Dealing with Radicalization.
2) Dealing with capacity.
3) Foreign terrorist fighters.
4) Terror financing.
5) Cyber terrorism.
•There are limitations but there are also commonalities between these five countries.
•Key interest to India- major issues are:-
- Climate change.
-International Global development architecture.
-Economic dynamism.