BRICS nations send strong message of joint commitment to openness, inclusiveness, cooperation

GOA, India - Leaders of BRICS nations - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- will meet on Friday in the western Indian state of Goa for their 8th summit with theme of "Building Responsive, Inclusive and Collective Solutions".

The summit came on the heels of the leaders' meeting in Hangzhou, China last month, during which they exchanged views on deepening cooperation and the challenges the countries are facing.

FROM HANGZHOU TO GOA

An important aspect of the Goa summit will be the strengthening of the BRICSG20 relationship. Innovation and inclusiveness formed part of G20s agenda and will also be a focus of the BRICS summit, Geethanjali Nataraj, a research fellow from Brookings India, said in an article recently published.

The close BRICS-G20 link and the Goa summit will provide an opportunity to further enhance cooperation in global governance with a focus on innovative and sustainable development, he said.

Coming as a result of the multipolarization of the world, the cooperation mechanism of the BRICS nations provides new possibilities for the birth of new economic growth models and renovation of the global governance system.

Chinese President Xi Jinping pointed out the direction for enhancing the BRICS cooperation by puting forward four proposals at the leaders' Informal Meeting held last month in Hangzhou.

According to the Chinese president, BRICS nations can work together in four aspects, namely, jointly innovating in growth patterns, jointly improving global governance, jointly safeguarding international fairness and justice and building a peaceful and stable development environment, and jointly advancing international cooperation in development and follow the path of sustainable development.

With the world economy still lingering in slowdown and amid a backdrop of hard times for traditional economic sectors, innovation stands out as the remedy and breakthrough point, which has become a consensus among many countries.

China spearheading at the Hangzhou summit of the G20 Blueprint on Innovative Growth, which calls for speeding up innovation-driven development, is a reflection of such consensus.

The financial crisis also exposed the structural shortcomings of the old global governance system. As the major locomotive of recent world economic growth, the emerging economies and developing countries have increasing desire and justified reasons to enhance their representation and say in international organizations.

The BRICS nations, as important members of the G20, should continue to strengthen communication and cooperation within the G20 framework, actively promote the governance structure reform of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and increase the representations and voice of emerging markets and developing countries.

Meanwhile, on the political front, the BRICS nations still have a lot to do in strengthening political security, facilitating the building of constructive and win-win international relations, and helping build a peaceful, stable, just and reasonable international order.

As leading emerging countries, the BRICS nations have also plenty to explore in such agenda as promoting South-South cooperation, propelling developing countries to honor their commitment and leading more other developing countries to the road of sustainable development.

At the Goa summit, there will also be a meeting between BRICS and the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), an international organization comprising Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal.

BRICS OF GOLD STILL GLITTERS

The BRICS mechanism has now become an effective cooperation platform for the five emerging economies. The countries have become the envy of the world due to their galloping growth.

In the past 10 years, the BRICS countries have contributed 50 percent to the world GDP growth, among which China accounted for 40 percent, and according to the IMF data, China has contributed 35 percent to world economic growth in the past five years.

However, as the world economy is still in the process of finding new growth momentum, the BRICS nations are facing great challenges.

Russia and Brazil are being affected by dropping commodity prices while the currency evaluation has dragged the recovery of South Africa.

All these seem to have footnoted the notion that the BRICS is losing luster.

But a closer look into the basics of the five nations will prove the shortsightedness, or at least over-pessimism of that view.

BRICS members still enjoy abundant natural and human resources, vast markets, huge growth potential and bright prospects from their policy coordination, letting alone the bouncing back of commodity prices such as those of iron ore.

Given time and policy coordination, the BRICS members are bound to continue to shine in the global economic arena.

LOOKING TO NEXT DECADE

It has been 10 years since the first meeting of BRIC Foreign Ministers took place in New York in 2006. In the past decade, the BRICS countries have been constantly expanding the scope of cooperation and improving their cooperation mechanism.

Ten years on, the GOA summit is due to become an important milestone.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said in the 2014 BRICS summit that BRICS countries should carry forward the spirit of openness, inclusiveness, cooperation and win-win results.

Against the backdrop of a trend of protectionism in some countries and counter-globalization, these principles ring resounding of the developing countries undertaking and vision.

For all the challenges, hardships and growing pains, as well as the members disparity and differences in geographical location, resource distribution, economic development levels and political landscape, the BRICS nations choose cooperation and consultation.

In fact, their cooperation mechanism has shown great achievements.

The nations successfully boosted their say in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), thus increasing the representations and say of emerging markets and developing countries.

The IMFs 2010 quota and governance reforms have finally taken effect and will give emerging markets like BRICS more power and greater say at the lender.

China will have the third largest IMF quota and voting share after the United States and Japan, and India, Brazil and Russia will also be among the top 10 members of the IMF.

The newly launched BRICS New Development Bank has already announced its first tranche of funding for green and sustainable projects for all five BRICS members in social sectors such as health care, education and population matters. It is now under evaluation.

As put by Dr Srikanth Kondapalli, a professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), the BRICS nations are increasingly making their voices heard in the international arena, upholding that it is not sensible overthrowing governments by force, as having been proven by the instabilities in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria.

The BRICS nations are intensifying joint efforts to amplify their voice in respect of agenda-setting as well as rule-making in international fora, and are contributing to strengthening international governance, according to Swaran Singh, professor of diplomacy and disarmament at the School of International Studies from the university.

The leaders are expected to take the opportunity at the Goa summit and make new breakthroughs, Singh said.