President Cyril Ramaphosa will lead the South African delegation at the virtual 12th BRICS Summit scheduled for Tuesday.
BRICS is an association of five major emerging countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, which together represent about 42% of the global population, 23% of GDP, 30% of the world’s territory and 18% of global trade.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, as Chair of BRICS for 2020, will chair the 12th BRICS Summit under the theme: “BRICS Partnership for Global Stability, Shared Security and Innovative Growth”.
The programme will include the traditional open Leaders’ Session where the heads of member states will address the summit with the aim to contribute to the future direction of BRICS.
“Leaders will be focused on strengthening intra-BRICS relations and mutually beneficial cooperation across the BRICS pillars of cooperation, namely, political and security, economic and finance, social, and people-to-people cooperation.
“The summit will receive reports from the BRICS National Security Advisors, the BRICS Business Council, the President of the New Development Bank (NDB), the Chair of the BRICS Inter-Bank Cooperation Mechanism; and the Chair of the BRICS Women’s Business Alliance,” said the Presidency on Monday.
For this year’s summit, some of the cooperation outcomes include the adoption of a revised strategy for BRICS Economic Partnership (2020-2025); the adoption of the BRICS Counter-Terrorism Strategy; the extension of the Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in the Field of Competition Law and Policy.
In addition, other cooperation outcomes include the first projects of the BRICS Energy Research Cooperation Platform; an Agreement on Cooperation on BRICS Remote Sensing Satellite Constellation; the adoption of a Roadmap for BRICS Energy Cooperation; and the launch of the BRICS Women’s Business Alliance.
South Africa’s membership of BRICS enables the country to employ additional and powerful tools in its fight to address the triple challenges of unemployment, poverty and inequality through increased trade, investment, tourism, capacity building, skills and technology transfers.
South Africa has made concerted efforts to place the African Continent and the Global South on the agenda of BRICS and to harmonise policies adopted in regional and international fora with those pursued in BRICS, i.e. Africa’s Agenda 2063 and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
President Ramaphosa will be supported by International Relations and Cooperation Minister Naledi Pandor; Finance Minister Tito Mboweni; State Security Minister Ayanda Dlodlo; Trade Industry and Competition Minister Ebrahim Patel and Health Minister, Dr Zweli Mkhize.
The meeting of the leaders of BRICS countries will be fully open to the media and live broadcasts can be accessed at the official website of the Russian BRICS Chairmanship in 2020 – https://brics-russia2020.ru/ – both in Russian and English.
The 12th BRICS summit is scheduled for 13h00-15h00 (SA Time) / 14h00-16h00 (Moscow time). – SAnews.gov.za
