With a little help from China
BRICS SUMMIT: RAMAPHOSA, XI JINPING SLAM UNILATERAL MEASURES
President Cyril Ramaphosa yesterday tells the Brics Summit in Johannesburg a Chinese bank has approved loans worth billions to help the South African economy.
Since its establishment, the New Development Bank has disbursed loans totalling $5.1 billion (R67 billion), with approvals amounting to $1.7 billion this year alone, President Cyril Ramaphosa told the Brics business forum meeting in Sandton yesterday.
Sharing the stage with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, at the start of Brics 10th summit, Ramaphosa singled out the bank’s establishment as “one of the most important achievements of the first decade of Brics”.
“As we enter the second decade of Brics cooperation, we are determined to expand the bank’s role in economic and social development,” he said, adding “Intra-Brics cooperation has been gaining momentum in areas such as finance; agriculture; trade; combating transnational crime; science and technology; health; education; security; and academic dialogue.
“This year also marks a decade of Brics collaboration, during which we’ve successfully shaped an ambitious agenda ...”
Without mentioning US President Donald Trump by name, both Ramaphosa and Jinping expressed concern at the threat of some world leaders taking unilateral trading decisions which hampered multilateralism.
Recently, the world witnessed an ugly tit-for-tat tariff trade war between the US and China.
“We are meeting here at a time when the multilateral trading system is facing unprecedented challenges,” said Ramaphosa. “We are concerned by the rise in unilateral measures that are incompatible with World Trade Organisation rules and are worried about the impact of these measures, especially on developing countries.”
He said African economic growth would be “supported by increasing foreign direct investment flows, public investment in infrastructure, and higher agricultural production”.
The continent’s working age population, he said, was “expected to double to one billion in the next 25 years”. “More opportunities are presented by the agreement to establish the African Continental Free Trade Area, which provides access to a market of over one billion people and a combined gross domestic product of $3 trillion.”
Jinping said emerging markets and developing countries already contributed to 80% of global development, charging that the collective rise of emerging markets was “unstoppable”.
Russia’s Vladimir Putin, India’s Narendra Modi, Brazil’s Michel Temer will address the summit today.