BRICS ministers meet urges for cooperation on e-commerce

The Dollar Business Bureau 

The BRICS trade ministers on Thursday prodded for enhanced cooperation on e-commerce amongst the member countries, besides calling for removing non-tariff barriers to encourage participation of emerging nations in the world trade. 

The ministers also emphasized on the need to increase cooperation in the field of intellectual property rights (IPRs).

The five-country group - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - created the BRICS IPR Cooperation Mechanism (IPRCM). 

The trade ministers instructed the IPRCM to start work on the decided terms of reference and enhance efforts to boost cooperation in a more coordinated and systematic manner. A joint communique released by the group after the 6th BRICS meeting said, “The ministers reiterated the importance of strengthening intra-BRICS cooperation on e-commerce...The ministers have emphasised the need for cooperation to boost e-commerce development in the BRICS countries, enhance capacity building and promote cooperation on infrastructure.”

On the issue of non-trade barriers, they stated that an increase in the hurdles impacted the participation of developing nations in world trade. 

“The BRICS trade ministers in principle agreed to the notions in the mechanism and asked the BRICS Contact Group on Economic and Trade Issues (CGETI) to further this work including on the matter of scope,” the communique said.

An assessment of the economic scenario of BRICS with regard to cooperation in the fields of trade and investment was made by the ministers. They acknowledged the significance of preserving policy space in order to encourage industrialisation and value-addition and to augment cooperation for sustainable development and structural transformation of BRICS nations. The media release said, “They also agreed that close cooperation among BRICS Business Council, CGETI, and New Development Bank (NDB) is useful for implementation and to bring the BRICS economic cooperation to a new level of high quality.” 

The five-country-group trade ministers equivocally recognised the role of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) as boosters to export-led growth and employment creation.