BRICS diplomats to meet in Brazil’s Curitiba on March 13-15

RIO DE JANEIRO, March 12 /TASS/. Sherpas of the BRICS group of countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) will meet in Brazil’s Curitiba on March 13-15 to discuss priority areas of future work, said the foreign ministry of the organization’s current chair, Brazil. The delegations are also expected to discuss the implementation of cooperation initiatives within the organization’s framework. A source in the Russian delegation told TASS that Russian diplomats will be led by a sous-sherpa, Deputy Director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Foreign Policy Planning Department Pavel Knyazev. The diplomats have already arrived to Curitiba. Brazil, which assumed the organization’s rotating presidency in January, is expected to host "about a hundred of meetings, including on the ministerial level, [as well as] various forums and working groups, during which the sides will discuss joint initiatives on a wide range of issues in economy, trade, financial sector, science and technology, culture, healthcare, security, state administration and social policies," the ministry said. BRICS is an informal association of five major emerging national economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The group was founded in June 2006 at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and was known as BRIC prior to inclusion of South Africa in 2009. The organization’s regular summits are held annually since 2009. The latest such meeting was held in July 2018 in Johannesburg. Apart from summits, BRICS officials also gather for talks at the level of foreign, finance, health, education, science and agriculture ministers, and at the level of national security council chiefs. Such meetings focus on energy efficiency, climate change, food security, poverty, sustainable development and activities of international financial institutions. Read more