The meeting of the BRICS trade minsters in 2017 concluded in Shanghai yesterday.
“The meeting has just concluded successfully. I can tell you that with the joint efforts of all parties, a statement about the 7th meeting of the BRICS trade minsters has been approved, and the BRICS nations have come to agreement on promoting trade development, strengthening cooperation on investment facilitation, deepening economic technological cooperation and supporting multilateral trade system,” said Minister of Commerce Zhong Shan at a press conference.
Develop e-commerce to be a new driver for cooperation
“The ministers reach a consensus that intensifying e-commerce cooperation will help boost trade growth, industrial transformation and upgrading and create jobs as well as help developing countries and small- and medium-sized enterprises to join in global value chain. They decide to establish an e-commerce working group and launch an e-commerce cooperation initiative to reinforce policy sharing and capacity building,” Zhong added.
Rapid development of information and communication technology makes e-commerce one of the most vigorous economic activities in the world. Among the five BRICS nations, except that South Africa is still at early stage of e-commerce development, other four countries witness fast development in e-commerce in recent years. E-commerce transaction of China, Russia, India and Brazil registered 20.2 trillion yuan, 15.6 billion US dollars, 13 billion US dollars and 12.8 billion US dollars in 2016, up by 23.6 percent, 21 percent, 32 percent and 17.6 percent year on year respectively.
Meanwhile, enterprises from the five BRICS nations have close contacts in e-commerce field. For example, featured products like pine nut and bee glue from Brazil, candies and cookies from Russia, handiwork and spice from India, and grapefruit and red wine from South Africa are hot-sale products in e-commerce platforms of Chinese enterprises.
“We believe that more featured commodities from other BRICS nations will be seen on table of Chinese ordinary people soon. There will be more chances for Chinese enterprises and counterparties from BRICS nations to carry out cooperation on e-commerce sales, logistics and payment.” Zhang remarked that e-commerce is expected to become a new driver of economic and trade cooperation among BRICS nations.
1st batch of fields that BRICS nations conduct service trade cooperation on finalized
Service trade, as one of important driver of global economic and trade growth, becomes increasingly significant to the cooperation of BRICS nations. The trade minsters of BRICS countries approved a service trade cooperation road map (hereinafter referred to as road map) at the meeting.
“Contribution of service sector to the economy of the five BRICS nations is over 50 percent.” Zhang Shaogang, director-general of the Department of International Trade and Economic Affairs at the Ministry of Commerce stated at the press conference that service trade plays a growingly important role in building an opening world economy.
As introduced, contents of the road map include background, visions, principles, cooperation forms, contacts and implementation. After deliberation, the first batch of fields involved in cooperation based on the road map cover tourism, healthcare service, audio-visual service, specialized service, service related to computer, research and development service, commercial service, architecture service, distribution service and education service.
Service trade of the BRICS nations totaled 539.41 billion US dollars in 2015, accounting for 11.3 percent of global exports, according to statistics from the World Trade Organization. “The two numbers imply that there is still huge potential for BRICS nations to reinforce service trade cooperation.” Zhang Shaogang said that economic aggregate of the BRICS nations accounts for one quarter of global economic aggregate, while service trade accounts for less than this proportion; therefore, work focus will be put on this sector in next step.
“The BRICS nations will adhere to the road map to intensify cooperation on information exchange, capacity building and coordination. They will also conduct cooperation on tourism, education and medical fields to make service trade a new highlight of trade development of these countries,” said Zhong Shan.
Come to agreement on the first specialized document about global investment facilitation
Investment is an important engine powering global economic growth and employment. Outbound investment of the BRICS nations totaled about 197 billion US dollars last year, but their domestic investment only accounted for around 6 percent of the former. Hence, there’s huge potential for growth in mutual investment among the BRICS nations.
One of the results of this meeting was endorsing the outlines for investment facilitation. This is another important achievement made in global investment policy after guidance for global investment agreed in the G20 Summit held in Hangzhou as well as the first specialized document about global investment facilitation.
It is introduced that the outlines have summarized the existing successful investment practice of BRICS nations, which will help increase transparency of investment policy framework, improve efficiency of administrative procedure related to investment and provide strong impetus for the development of BRICS nations.
(By Vanessa)
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