BRICS Summit Good Opportunity to Expand Co-operation Among Countries
The BRICS Summit in the southeastern Chinese city of Xiamen will be a good opportunity for member nations to narrow differences and expand cooperation, a leading expert on international affairs said. Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu, a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told Xinhua in a recent interview here that the upcoming summit is very important because it sets a stage to resolve differences among BRICS nations and extend co-operation from economic issues to other areas.
The expert, who is also a visiting professor of Centre for Global Affairs at New York University, made the comments nearly a month before the ninth annual BRICS summit to be held in Xiamen from September 3 to 5.
The BRICS summit brings together Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa that comprise its moniker, along with participants from across the globe.
Sidhu expected member states in the meeting to sustain the momentum on the BRICS’ New Development Bank (NDB), as well as other economic arrangements such as infrastructure investment.
The NDB was set up with an initial authorised capital of US$100 billion (FJ$2bln) during the sixth BRICS Summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, in 2014. It officially opened in Shanghai in 2015. According to the expert, the NDB is very crucial for BRICS countries in both geopolitical and financial dimensions.
“BRICS countries like China and India are important players in the international financial institutions, but they are not being able to get the right amount of weightage that they deserve,” said Mr Sidhu. He added that reforms in the existing structure such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been very slow, which lead to the creation of new and alternative structures including the NDB.
In terms of finance, the bank plays a critical role in generating new sources of funding for projects in infrastructure and sustainable development, “not only in BRICS countries, but other countries as well,” Mr Sidhu noted.
The professor called for more cooperation in climate change, cyber security, trade, energy and counter terrorism issues.