BRICS Trade Fair, Business Forum & Business Council to be held in New Delhi on Oct 12-14

New Delhi, Oct 3 (KNN) Recognizing the need for measures to deepen intra-BRICS economic engagement, trade and investment ties, BRICS Trade Fair, Business Forum & Business Council will be organized in the national capital in October.

The programmes planned at New Delhi – BRICS Trade Fair (October 12-14, 2016), BRICS Business Forum (October 13, 2016) and BRICS Business Council (October 14, 2016) – are steps that would help the grouping to collectively move in this direction.

The first BRICS Trade Fair and Exhibition will be staged just ahead of the BRICS political summit in Goa (October 15-16, 2016).

“This major initiative was proposed by the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, last year during his address to the members of the BRICS Business Council at Ufa, Russia. In line with the overall core theme for BRICS in 2016, the focus of the Trade Fair is ‘Building BRICS – Innovation for Collaboration’,” Ministry of Commerce & Industry said in a statement.

The Trade Fair is expected to give an impetus to intra-BRICS economic engagement and to foster connects amongst members of our business community.

The Fair will showcase about 20 key sectors. These include aerospace, agro-processing, auto and auto components, chemicals, green energy and renewables, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, railways, textiles and apparel, infrastructure, IT, engineering goods, tourism, gems and jewellery and skill development.

The BRICS Trade Fair will be a platform for respective BRICS countries to exhibit the state-of-the-art technologies and advances made in industrial development.

Besides established companies, start-ups and innovators from BRICS will showcase their offerings.

Besides, business leaders from BIMSTEC countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand) have been invited for meetings and discussions with the BRICS business leaders and companies at the Trade Fair.

In addition to the BRICS Trade Fair, BRICS Business Forum will be held on October 13, 2016. This is a full day conference that will see participation from over 1000 business delegates from all BRICS countries.

Vice President of India and the Trade Ministers of all BRICS nations have been invited to address the participants and share their vision for economic engagement at the BRICS Business Forum.

The Vice President of New Development Bank and the senior team will join this forum and share how the private sector can support its own efforts to promote sustainable development projects across BRICS countries. The Forum is expected to give a fillip to these efforts.

The engagement of BRICS countries with the rest of the world in terms of trade flows has increased over time. Merchandise imports from the world into the BRICS countries have gone up from US$ 2.95 trillion in 2012 to US$ 3.03 trillion in 2014.

Likewise, the global merchandise exports of the BRICS countries have gone up from US$ 3.2 trillion in 2012 to US$ 3.47 trillion in 2014. Intra-BRICS trade has also been on the rise. In 2012, intra-BRICS trade stood at US$ 281.4 billion and this increased to US$ 297 billion in 2014. This encouraging trend needs to be strengthened as trade amongst BRICS nations is less than 5 per cent of their total global trade.