By IANS,
New Delhi : Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma Friday stressed on building and deepening South-South relations to address issues such as trade and investment, knowledge and technology transfer and alternative development models.
“Our ministerial-level participation in the forum underlined India’s long-standing commitment to partner and share best practices with African countries in their socio-economic development, human resource development and capacity-building,” said Sharma at the May 4-6 meeting of the World Economic Forum at Cape Town.
“The institutional mechanism of the India-Africa Forum summit meetings has enabled us to further develop mutually beneficial partnerships aimed at the overall progress of the continent,” he added.
During the forum meeting, the minister, who headed a high-level business delegation, participated in two key sessions on climate change and South-South cooperation along with President Jacob Zuma.
The session dealt with the main challenges and opportunities behind deeper South-South interaction and collaboration, economic and ways to accelerate the South-South trade and investment ties.
According to Sharma, the exports from developing countries now constitute 37 percent of global trade, of which about half relates to South-South trade.
Emphasising upon the need for deeper South-South interaction, Sharma said that it will help in having commonality of approaches on the major issues of international importance including climate change, reform of the international financial system and global financial crisis.