President Cyril Ramaphosa will lead the South African delegation during his participation in the virtual 13th BRICS Summit scheduled for tomorrow, 9 September 2021.
BRICS is a grouping of five major emerging economies – 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.
The 13th BRICS Summit will be chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the Republic of India, as Chair of BRICS for 2021, under the theme: “BRICS@15: lntra-BRICS Cooperation for Continuity, Consolidation and Consensus”.
The programme will include opening remarks, which are open to the media, and the traditional closed Leaders’ Session, which will reflect on 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 also receive reports from the BRICS National Security Advisors, the Chair of the BRICS Business Council, the Chair of the BRICS Women’s Business Alliance, and the President of the New Development Bank (NDB).
The Summit will adopt the BRICS 2021 New Delhi Declaration that emphasises the priorities of the Indian Chairship in 2021, namely reform of the multilateral system, counter-terrorism cooperation, the application of digital and technological solutions for achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and enhancing people-to-people exchanges.
For this year’s Summit, some of the cooperation outcomes include a revised Action Plan for Agricultural Cooperation of BRICS Countries, a Counter-Terrorism Strategy Action Plan, an Action Plan for implementing the Strategy on BRICS Economic Partnership and a revised BRICS Action Plan for Innovation Cooperation.
South Africa’s membership of BRICS enables the country to employ additional and powerful tools in its fight to address its domestic triple challenges of unemployment, poverty and inequality through increased trade, investment, tourism, capacity building, skills and technology transfers, particularly to address its post-pandemic economic recovery.
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, particularly Africa’s Agenda 2063 and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
President Ramaphosa will be supported by Dr Naledi Pandor, Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Mr Enoch Godongwana, Minister of Finance, Mr Ebrahim Patel, Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition, Dr Joe Phaahla, Minister of Health, and Mr Zizi Kodwa, Deputy Minister in the Presidency responsible for State Security.
Source: Government of South Africa