SME Times News Bureau | 20 Jul, 2012
BRICS countries are currently moving ahead in areas in which
the five member-countries can easily cooperate such as trade facilitation, said
an Indian government official.
"We are leaving out contentious issues at the moment and focusing on areas
where we can most easily cooperate," Zothan Khuma, joint secretary in the
commerce ministry said.
Khuma listed out the areas of such cooperation as being customs, trade facilitation
and small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries command a
gross domestic product of $13.7 trillion and the New Delhi Leaders' Summit in
March this year asked the countries to strive to achieve an intra-grouping
trade of $500 billion by 2015.
Khuma said in the SME sector, Russian diplomats have proposed a
"technology platform" whereby Russian patent holders would cooperate
with the private sector in BRICS countries for incubating specific technologies
towards their commercially viable production.
E-commerce development and investment cooperation were also identified as areas
of cooperation.
A BRICS contact group on economic and trade issues was formed last year to
initiate cooperation in the identified areas.
Another official, Usha Titus, director in India's finance ministry, said the
proposed BRICS Development Bank would be important to mobilise savings towards
addressing global infrastructure issues like energy requirements, which are
estimated to need investments of $33 trillion in the next 25 years, and 64
percent of which would be needed in the developing economies.
Participating in a seminar, "BRICS Trade Investment and Finance
Cooperation" here earlier this week, financial analyst Bandi Ram Prasad
said there is great possibility of intra-BRICS finance cooperation.
He pointed out that India ranked among the top five nations in equity
derivatives and is also among the top three in commodity futures, while China
is ahead of the table in terms of both value of stocks and market
capitalization.
Putting in perspective the significance of the multilateral group in the global
context, Dinesh Bhatia, joint secretary in the external affairs ministry, said
BRICS is emerging as a factor of stability and growth in view of the global
economic crisis.
The EU has praised BRICS as an attempt at an orderly reform of the global
governance system.
The seminar was organised jointly by the New Delhi based think-tank Observer
Research Foundation (ORF) and Jaipur-based NGO, CUTS International.