“We need to do our own thing”: BRICS Business Meet
June 18, 2015, 11:40 am

Brazil envoy to the IMF and newly announced BRICS Bank Vice President , Paulo Nogueirga Batista, said at the BRICS Business forum on Thursday that the BRICS are “not fully satisfied with the international financial architecture, not fully satisfied with the role that our countries are allowed to have at the IMF and the World Bank” [BRICS5]

The BRICS to-do list is clear- free trade, economic growth, BRICS Bank, a new energy alliance.

“We are working closely on development of Russian exports with BRICS. We are taking some very important decisions from Summit to Summit,” said Alexey Likhachev, Russia’s First Deputy Minister of Economic Development.

“Priority of Russian Presidency is to reach an economic partnership strategy that will be unveiled during the Ufa summit,” he added.

The BRICS, however, face challenges of removing trade barriers, Likhachev warned.

An Indian business representative at the meet said the BRICS have made huge advancements in cooperation.

“BRICS is a very important forum for us. Indian Prime Minister Modi said in Fortaleza, Brazil that BRICS represents the potential of the future. We have talked about common guidelines for investment principles,” said Didar Singh, head of Indian industry body FICCI.

India, which will host the BRICS Summit in 2016, has also proposed a “common and integrated trade fair organization for BRICS”.

Ping Yu, Vice Chairman, China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, however, admitted that the BRICS countries need more “mutual understanding”.

“We are talking about a huge market which unites our countries and we see high growth rates in bilateral trade. Although we probably don’t understand each other too well right now because we don’t know the capacities and capabilities of our partners. We need to work on new mechanisms of adjustment with each other,” said Yu.

“The Chinese business community would like such events to be used to understand the trends and to establish direct contacts between business people from BRICS on specific projects,” Yu added.

“Probably we are somehow missing the role of the SMEs partially… We hope that in planning future business forums, we will pay attention to needs of small businesses in BRICS countries,” the Chinese business delegate noted.

Brazil’s envoy to the IMF and newly announced BRICS Bank Vice President , Paulo Nogueirga Batista, said at the BRICS Business forum on Thursday that the BRICS are “not fully satisfied with the international financial architecture, not fully satisfied with the role that our countries are allowed to have at the IMF and the World Bank”.

Batista clarified that these are not the views of the IMF.

“The BRICS are very different countries… We have very important common traits… We (four in the BRICS) are among the ten largest countries in terms of territory, population, GDP,” noted Batista at the forum.

“Our countries are very active in IMF….We work together at the IMF… Despite this active involvement in the Washington institutions, our countries have begun to realize that we need to do our own thing,” said Batista.

After being nominated by the Rousseff-administration as the Vice President of the BRICS Bank, Batista said he will be moving to Shanghai, where the Bank will base its headquarters, in July.

The first meet of the BRICS Bank governors will be held in July in Russia.

Batista on Thursday said the BRICS have created a pre-management team in Shanghai even before the actual entry into force of the New Development Bank.

Kundapur Vaman Kamath, the Indian nominee to be the BRICS Bank President held talks with Batista on the sidelines of the event.

Replying to a question on the election of the Brazilian Roberto Azevedo to the post of WTO Chief, Batista said although Azevedo is working to represent a global organization, “but of course, being a Brazilian, I fully expect that he will be listening closely to the views of the BRICS countries”.

Meanwhile, Russian CEOs and officials present at the meet in Saint Petersburg also asked for greater BRICS cooperation in global trade and investment.

Oleg Sienko, CEO of Russian state firm JSC Research and Production Corporation Uralvagonzavod, said if the BRICS want to develop their economies “we must begin settling our accounts in national currencies cutting out the US dollar”.

Alexander Saltanov, Vice-President at Russian Railways JSC also spoke at the economic forum stressing that “the creation of BRICS opens up avenues for development of railways not only in Russia but BRICS.

“We hope to see real tangible BRICS projects, bilateral projects, and also joint projects in third countries,” said Saltanov.

Andrei Nikitin, Director at the Russian Agency for Strategic Initiatives said at the forum on Thursday that a BRICS working group is also working on setting up an information exchange and addressing issues of human resources development.

The BRICS have been gaining ground as the G20’s credibility is being undermined by its inability to deliver on previous headline commitments.

The G20, had in 2010, agreed to what were widely called “historic” changes to the governance of the IMF to recognise the growing power of emerging markets.

This week, the IMF, however, yet again deferred the decision on voting reforms.

In the meantime the BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – became so frustrated they have moved to set up a $100 billion development bank of their own.

TBP