By IANS,
New Delhi : Ahead of the fourth BRICS summit of the five emerging powers, India Tuesday said the reform of the global governance institutions and ways to fix the festering recession will top the agenda when the leaders of India, China, Brazil, Russia and South Africa meet here for talks in March.
“How we handle the world financial situation will be on top of the agenda. The summit will be looking at issues related to the global financial crisis in a macro-economic manner,” Sudhir Vyas, secretary (economic affairs) in the external affairs ministry, said here ahead of the BRICS summit in New Delhi March 29.
The summit will look at reforms that need to be introduced to help achieve strong, sustained and balanced global growth, he said.
Our focus will be not only to consolidate the economies of BRICS countries but also to consolidate global economic recovery in a sustainable manner, said Vyas.
Vyas was speaking at a forum organised by the external affairs ministry and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) on the ‘Role of BRICS in the New Emerging World Order.’
Senior Indian officials involved with the BRICS summit and diplomats from BRICS countries also participated in the discussions.
The BRICS has evolved into a powerful grouping of the world’s leading emerging economies that, according to an estimate, accounts for nearly half the world’s population, 30 percent of global landmass, 18 percent of global GDP and 35 percent of global foreign exchange reserves.
The fourth BRICS summit is expected to come out with an ambitious agenda that will focus on managing the global economic crisis, reform of international institutions of governance and an increased focus on developmental issues that includes food security, energy security, public health, science and technology and urbanisation, said Vyas.
The summit of the leaders of BRICS countries will be preceded by the Business Forum comprising trade ministers of the rapidly growing economies of the five countries.
In the run-up to the summit, a host of events will be held, including an academic forum of leading think tanks of BRICS countries, the meeting of an economic research group that will explore issues affecting economies of the developing world and a Financial Forum of development banks of these countries.
This will be the first time India will be hosting the BRICS summit since the first summit was held in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg in June 2009. At that time, South Africa was not part of the grouping which was just called BRIC, a term coined by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill to denote the four fastest-growing emerging economies of the world.
Pretoria joined the BRIC, changing the nomenclature of the grouping to BRICS, only in April 2011 at the Sanya summit in China.