South Africa will this week host the 10th summit of the BRICS bloc, which groups Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The BRICS Leaders’ Summit is scheduled for to July 25 to 27.
BY OWN CORRESPONDENT
The summit is convened annually with discussions representing spheres of political and socio-economic coordination, in which member countries have identified several business opportunities, economic complementarities and areas of cooperation.
The leadership of the forum is rotated annually among the members, in accordance with the acronym BRICS.
South Africa assumed the leadership of BRICS from January 1 to December 31. The 2018 summit will be a seminal milestone for BRICS cooperation, as it represents a decade of cooperation at the highest diplomatic level.
Over and above the summit, BRICS cooperation in the past decade has expanded to include an annual programme of over 100 sectoral meetings.
Cooperation among members is predicated on three levels or “tracks” of interaction, namely:
Track I: Formal diplomatic engagement between the national governments.
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Track II: Engagement through government-affiliated institutions, e.g. state-owned enterprises and business councils.
Track III: Civil society and “people-to-people” engagement.
BRICS is a group of leading emerging economies that play key role in world development platforms.
The group has received overwhelming global attention since its inception and continues to play a critical role across the globe.
BRICS countries are influential members of leading international organisations and agencies, including the United Nations, the Group of20, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77.
They are also members of various regional associations. Russia is a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Collective Security Treaty Organisation and the Eurasian Economic Union.
Russia and China are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation.
Brazil is a member of the Union of South American Nations and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.
South Africa is a member of the African Union and the Southern African Development Community. India is a member of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation.
