Under the chairship of India, the First Meeting of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) Contact Group on Economic and Trade Issues (CGETI) was held from 9th March 2021 to 11th March 2021. This is 26th Meeting of BRICS CGETI.
The 2021 theme of the BRICS is “BRICS@15: Intra BRICS Cooperation for Continuity, Consolidation, and Consensus”.
The first meeting of BRICS-CGETI:
i.India presented the calendar of events for BRICS CGETI 2021, this includes the priority areas for deliverables, schedule and scope of the MSME roundtable conference workshop on Services Statistics, and the BRICS Trade Fair.
ii.A series of presentations on the proposed deliverables during India’s chairship under the BRICS CGETI track was made in a separate session by the concerned departments of the government of India.
The proposed deliverables were:
- Action plan based on the document “Strategy for BRICS Economic Partnership 2025” adopted during the Russian Presidency in 2020
- BRICS Cooperation on Multilateral Trading system including cooperation for the TRIPS Waiver proposal at WTO;
- Framework for Consumer Protection in E-Commerce;
- Non-Tariff Measures (NTM) Resolution Mechanism;
- Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary (SPS) Working Mechanism;
- Co-operation framework for the protection of Genetic Resources and Traditional Knowledge
- BRICS Framework on Co-operation in Professional Services.
Key Points:
i.To reach the consensus among the BRICS countries, the Inter-sessional deliberations will be carried out till September 2021.
ii.The BRICS officers tasked with CGETI will work for the 27th official level CGETI meeting, which will be held in June 2021.
Recent Related News:
India virtually held the inaugural 3-day long Sherpas meeting from February 24-26, 2021. This is the 1st Sherpas meeting hosted by India after it assumed the 2021 BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) Chairship. India succeeds Russia as the Chair of BRICS.
The meeting was chaired by Sanjay Bhattacharyya, Secretary, CPV and OIA (Consular, Passport & Visa and Overseas Indian Affairs) & P Harish, Additional Secretary, Economic Relations as India’s BRICS Sherpa & Sous Sherpa.
About BRICS:
Establishment– 2009
Members– Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa
Current Chair – India
The First BRICS Ministerial Meeting was held on 20th September 2006.
