Trade and Industry Minister, Rob Davies, on Friday urged BRICS countries to bring an emerging market view in global discussions on trade in a bid to promote development-centred and inclusive growth, the department of trade and industry (dti) said.
Davies was speaking at the 6th meeting of the BRICS Trade Ministers that completed on Friday in New Delhi, India, together with the Minister of Small Business Development, Lindiwe Zulu.
BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) were meeting for the pre-BRICS Summit engagements in New Delhi, India from Thursday.
The outcomes of the trade ministers’ meeting would be submitted to the 8th BRICS Summit to be held on Saturday and Sunday in Goa, India.
Davies highlighted that global trade was recovering at a slower pace from economic challenges, such as continued slowdown in global growth and depressed global demand, low commodity and oil prices and volatility in the equity and currency markets.
He emphasised that BRICS was an important grouping of developing economies that accounted for 22 percent of global GDP and 42 percent of the world population, saying that this pointed to the need to increase mutually-beneficial projects among BRICS countries.
According to the dti, intra-BRICS exports have been growing on average at 2.8 percent per year since 2010.
South Africa’s export basket continues to be dominated to a large extent by primary products and low-value added products.
The BRICS countries present opportunities for cooperation in establishing intra-BRICS value chains and linkages among the economies.
A welcome development has been an increase in intra-BRICS investment in key sectors of the South African economy.
For example, South Africa has seen a large investment in the auto-sector by Beijing Automobile International Corporation (BAIC) which amounts to R11 billion.
Davies also stressed the need for BRICS cooperation towards identification of complementarities, sharing of experiences and capacity building in a number of trade and investment related issues.
Zulu, who also partook in the meetings, emphasised the importance of BRICS countries cooperation on the development of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).
In this regard, Zulu said cooperation should be targeted towards promoting supplier development and participation of MSMEs in the BRICS countries value-chains, exchange of best practices on MSME development.
On the sidelines of the BRICS Trade Ministers meetings, the Ministers held bilateral meetings with his counterparts to discuss trade and investment issues of mutual interests.
South Africa Today – South Africa News
