“Despite turbulence in global economic situation, India is the fastest-growing major economy in the world. Soon, India will be a 5 trillion dollar economy”, PM Modi said at BRICS Business Forum Leaders’ Dialogue in Johannesburg, South Africa.
“There is no doubt that India will become the growth engine for world in coming years”, the prime minister said, while recalling reforms undertaken by his government in the past nine years, reports the Hindustan Times.
“This is because India turned pandemic into an opportunity to carry out economic reforms. Through our reforms in mission mode, the ease of business has improved in India”, Modi said.
“We have reduced compliance burden, replaced red tape with red carpet and boosted investors’ confidence by implementing GST along with Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code”, the prime minister told the gathering.
The prime minister said the government had opened defence and space sectors for private players, and added that there is major focus on public service delivery and good governance.
“With the help of technology, India has leaped forward in the field of financial inclusion. The rural women have been the biggest beneficiaries. With a single click, crores of people in India are benefitting from direct transfer benefit, which total more than $360 billion”, the prime minister said.
“It has enhanced transparency in service delivery, thereby reducing corruption and the role of middlemen”, he added.
Referring to global challenges in wake of Covid-19 pandemic, PM Modi said the role of BRICS nations is crucial. He told the gathering that India has the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem and there are over 100 unicorns in the country.
As the host country’s President, Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa is the summit Chair; he will be joined by his Brazil counterpart Lula da Silva, Modi, and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Russia, the ‘R’ in BRICS, will be represented by foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, while President Vladimir Putin will participate virtually. In all, more than 50 leaders will be present.
Chinese President Xi Jinping skipped a business forum in South Africa where he was scheduled to deliver a speech, sending Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao instead.
The leaders of Brazil, India and South Africa on Tuesday all addressed the event, a prelude to a BRICS summit in Johannesburg. Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a pre-recorded video message — he missed the gathering of emerging-market powers to avoid an international arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court.
It wasn’t immediately clear why Xi changed his plans. He attended a lunch hosted by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa shortly before the forum.
The two leaders also met as part of Xi’s state visit on Tuesday morning, and Xi called on two countries to boost their combined influence on international affairs in the Global South.
African countries want China to shift its focus from building infrastructure on the continent to local industrialisation, China’s top Africa diplomat said on Tuesday at a briefing on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in South Africa.
“African integration is already escalating and many African countries (have) asked China to consider (a) shift (of) our focus,” Wu Peng, director-general of China’s department of African affairs at its foreign ministry, said.
Wu said the change was needed especially considering the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA), which was launched at the start of 2021 and is intended to enable African countries to trade tariff-free in future.
“Investor confidence has increased after the implementation of GST and Insolvency and Bankruptcy code in India. Defence and Space sectors opened for the private sector…With the use of technology, we have taken a leap in financial inclusion…Today, UPI is being used by street vendors to those shopping malls…We are actively taking steps to make India a manufacturing hub in the areas of solar energy, wind energy, electric vehicles and green hydrogen..,” said PM Modi.
What can BRICS meet achieve?
The first in-person summit since 2019 of the grouping once seen as a credible counterweight to the Western-led blocs began with more than a sense of unease. China, the largest economy of the outfit, is pushing for a significant expansion of the group, and at least 22 nations — many of them in Africa — have requested entry.
No-limits partners Moscow and Beijing are far more closely aligned than what was even imaginable when Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill first coined the term BRIC in 2001 (The S was added later, in 2011, when South Africa joined the grouping).
The relationship between India and China has plunged since violent clashes in June 2020 at the Line of Actual Control, and tensions simmer over patrolling rights and disengagement at key points, as evident in the intransigence shown by Beijing in border talks.
South Africa is caught in its own development and corruption quagmire. And, of course, the international climate has changed significantly from the early 2010s, the heyday of Brics, when it was seen as an emerging, and more representative, challenger to western groupings that were seen as shutting out developing countries from their boardrooms.