BRICS leaders to hold summit in Russia’s Ufa

UFA, July 9. /TASS/. Leaders of Russia, Brazil, India, China and South Africa will take part in a BRICS summit in Russia’s Ufa on Thursday. The summit’s key topic is "BRICS Partnership - a Powerful Factor in Global Development," Russian president’s aide Yuri Ushakov told journalists. On Wednesday, the BRICS leaders had a number of bilateral meetings and met over an informal lunch. Key events of the summit are planned for Thursday. The agenda in particular includes a meeting with representatives of trade union associations of the BRICS countries and with the BRICS Business Council. The summit's programme features two sessions - in a narrow and in an extended formats. A meeting in the narrow format will begin at a working breakfast. According to Ushakov, the leaders will discuss the most topical global problems, including the situation in Ukraine, in Greece and efforts against the terrorist group Islamic State. Official talks will focus on possibilities for closer industrial, technological and financial cooperation, the launch of the New Development Bank (NDB) and the Contingency Reserve Arrangement (CRA) with an overall volume of 200 billion U.S. dollars. Apart from that, according to Ushakov, the five leaders will exchange views on the Syrian crisis, the situation around Iran, issues of the Middle East settlement. The BRICS leaders are expected to reiterate their commitment to the basic principles of international law and speak in favour of enhancing the United Nations’ central role. The meeting in the extended format will be crowned by the signing of joint documents, including the Ufa declaration and an action plan. The declaration will give an assessment of the current global political and economic situation. It is not ruled out that the declaration will have a call for full implementation of all the provisions of the Minsk agreements and for diplomatic talks to settle the Ukrainian crisis. The action plan will specify BRICS’ work for the forthcoming year and will include new areas of cooperation between the member states. At Moscow’s initiative, the summit will also adopt a strategy of economic partnership of the BRICS countries for a period up to 2020. The strategy is geared towards closer business cooperation and provides for measures to promote competitiveness of the BRICS member states in the global economy. Apart from that, a number of multilateral sectoral documents will be signed in the presence of the BRICS leaders. After the summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin, as a leader of the presiding nation, will sum up the results of the summit and will hold a number of bilateral meetings. Along with that, the BRICS leaders will hold an informal meeting with their partners from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), and will take part in a reception. The presidential aide said this meeting would present a possibility to discuss "the situation in Eurasia and the necessity of closer cooperation in this space." Established in June 2006, the BRIC association originally included four countries, namely Brazil, Russia, India and China to be expanded to the BRICS format after South Africa joined it in 2011. Its goal is to promote active, pragmatic, open and transparent dialogue and cooperation between its member countries. The BRICS is an off-bloc association aimed at no third parties. The first official summit of the association was held in Russia’s Yekaterinburg in June 2009. Ever since, summit meetings have been held annually in each of the member states alternatively. The latest summit took place in Brazil. Russia took over presidency in the BRICS from April 1, 2015. Russia is also presiding the BRICS Business Council in a period from April 2015 to April 2016. One of the goals of Russia’s presidency is to implement the agreements on the establishment of BRICS own financial institutions, namely the New Development Bank of BRICS (NDB) and Contingency Reserve Arrangement (CRA). The next BRICS summit will take place in Russia’s Ufa on July 8-9, 2015. The BRICS countries account for 26 percent of the entire Earth’s area and 42 percent of the Earth’s population. In 2013, the BRICS accounted for 16.1 percent of global trade, for 10.8 percent of global defence spending, and for 40.2 percent of global production of traditional fuels. Read more