BRICS to work together at G20, WTO

New Delhi, March 28 (IANS) Trade ministers from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) Wednesday agreed to make collective efforts to break the impasse on Doha round of the Word Trade Organisation (WTO) talks and push forward developing countries' agenda at the G20 meet.

"We will closely coordinate our position at the G20 ministerial meeting and also at Unctad meeting next month in Doha," India's Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma said at a joint press briefing with his counterparts from other BRICS member countries.

He said trade ministers from all the five member countries expressed concern at the prevailing impasse on Doha round of the WTO talks and agreed for a "fair and equitable outcome".

"Ministers expressed their willingness to explore outcomes in specific areas where progress is possible while preserving the centrality of development in the Doha mandate and within the overall framework of the single undertaking," said a joint statement issued after the meeting of the BRICS trade ministers.

Trade and economic ministers from the BRICS countries met a day before the fourth BRICS summit to be held here Thursday.

The ministers agreed to coordinate their positions at other multilateral fora as well especially at the forthcoming meeting of the G20 trade ministers and 13th Unctad meet to be held in Doha next month.

BRICS, which represents nearly 43 percent of the world's population, set a target to more than double the intra-group trade.

"Our intra-group trade is $212 billion and we see that it should be possible for us, given the kind of cooperation we have, to take it to over $500 billion," Sharma said.

Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming said China would substantially increase imports from BRICS member countries, including India.

"We have agreed to work together to facilitate trade. China will import more from India and other BRICS countries," he said.

Ministers directed their officials to explore ways and means for enhancing and furthering intra-BRICS cooperation especially in the areas of customs cooperation, exchange of experiences in trade facilitation, investment promotion small and medium enterprise cooperation and trade data collection and harmonisation, e-commerce cooperation and intellectual property rights cooperation, the joint statement said.

"Ministers also agreed that officials should work together to ensure that BRICS members enhance their trade, including of higher value added manufactured products, to support industrialisation and employment in their countries."