By IANS,
New Delhi : With the G20 summit underlining the importance of emerging economies in resolving global financial slowdown, Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) are planning a summit that could give a push to the long-standing demands for reforms of international financial institutions.
“A summit among BRIC countries is being discussed. It could take place next year,” Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon told reporters here Monday.
Highlighting the increasing cooperation between India, Russia and China in trilateral formats and the cooperation of these countries with Brazil, he said that although the global financial crisis has given an impetus to this idea, the summit proposal predates the meltdown.
Menon also underscored the need for reforms of global financial institutions to give greater voice to major developing countries.
BRIC is not a grouping yet, but an acronym coined and popularized by Goldman Sachs, the bank holding company, in 2001 to refer to the world’s major emerging economies.
The summit among BRIC countries will seek to give a formal structure to their quadrilateral cooperation on global issues and intends to convert their growing economic power into geopolitical clout.
The issue also figured in discussions when finance ministers of BRIC countries met in Sao Paulo a week before the G20 summit in Washington Nov 15 and decided on coordinated measures to increase trade and capital flows between their economies.
The Nov 15 summit of G20 countries underlined the growing clout of emerging nations in the new economic world order.
One of the important decisions taken at the G20 summit was to include Brazil, India and China in the board of the Financial Stability Forum – the global policy powerhouse that has been the preserve of the G8.
BRIC countries, the world’s top emerging economies and rising powers, are enhancing their quadrilateral cooperation through a meeting of their ministers at various global and regional summits.
Foreign ministers of BRIC countries met on the sidelines of the G8 summit in Japan July. The leaders of India and Brazil also interact at the annual IBSA conclave that also includes South Africa. Foreign Ministers of India, Russia and China also meet in the annual trilateral meeting that seeks to create a genuinely multi-polar world and enhance multi-faceted cooperation between the three countries.