BRICS Summit to Focus on Promoting Growth

The 8th BRICS summit will be held in the Indian city of Goa beginning October 15. It will bring together leaders from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—the BRICS member countries.

The theme of this year’s summit is: “Building responsive, inclusive and collective solutions.” The gathering will mainly focus on economic issues faced by BRICS nations and try to find a collective and collaborative response, PTI reported.

BRICS countries represent about 43% of the world population. The sheer amount of people inhabiting the BRICS countries makes the group an important international player when working together for common goals.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will look to reinvigorate the BRICS group, with India seen as a bright spot in a bloc whose clout has been undermined by economic woes.

The nations, with a joint estimated gross domestic product of $16 trillion, set up their own bank in parallel to the Washington-based International Monetary Fund and World Bank and hold summits rivaling the Group of Seven forum.

But the countries, accounting for 53% of the world population, have been hit by falling global demand and lower commodity prices, while some have been mired in corruption scandals.

Russia and Brazil have fallen into recession recently; South Africa only just managed to avoid the same fate last month; while China’s economy, the recent engine of world growth, has slowed sharply.

By contrast, India is now the world’s fastest-growing major economy in an otherwise gloomy environment and its GDP is expected to grow 7.6% in 2016-2017.

Ahead of the summit in the Indian tourist state of Goa, Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley warned a gathering of BRICS officials Thursday that the growing opposition to globalization and free trade in western countries would hurt the world economy.

Earlier, Indian Foreign Ministry official Amar Sinha said leaders at the summit would debate “global growth prospects, the role of BRICS in leading this global growth and our contributions to it”.

Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Li Baodong said the leaders would “exchange in-depth views on BRICS cooperation and other global and regional issues”, according to state news agency Xinhua.

Some of the more substantive talks are expected at bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the summit, with Modi expected to meet Chinese and Russian Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin separately.

Meanwhile, new Brazilian President Michel Temer will look to such meetings to boost trade ties and help drag his country out of its worst recession in half a century.