BRICS nations up ante on cooperation

By Li Ying

The internal bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) decided on Wednesday to set up a liaison group to intensify cooperation.

Following the meeting, attended by the economic and trade ministers from the five nations, Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming said in South China's resort city of Sanya that "This consensus indicates a concrete step in the institutional building of deepened business cooperation of the BRICS countries."

Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma said the five BRICS countries should intensify coordination in the fields of agriculture, food safety and high-end manufacturing so as to maximize their advantages.

Su Jingxiang, deputy director of the Center for Globalization Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times that BRICS has set a model of cooperation between emerging powers and developing countries, which would be helpful in solving the North-South problems.

"The evolution of BRICS displays the rise of the major emerging economies in the world. The mechanism is conducive to their efforts in helping build a fair and reasonable international financial order and solving problems in their development," Su said.

Chinese President Hu Jintao met with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, South African President Jacob Zuma and Russia President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday in Sanya before the summit, one day after he met Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in Beijing, Xinhua reported.

"This organization has evolved into a new and highly important international format," Medvedev said in an interview Tuesday with China Central Television.

The cooperative quintuplet's combined gross domestic product (GDP) accounted for 18 percent of the global total in 2010 and contributed more than 60 percent of global economic growth. It is also widely projected that the bloc's total GDP will surpass that of the US by 2020, according to Xinhua.

While BRICS countries have become pace-setters in the global economic recovery, some analysts have voiced concerns that the group of emerging economies will gradually evolve to an anti-West bloc with a political agenda, Su said. "However, the cooperation, including politically and economically, between emerging markets is necessary because of the structure of the world economy. "