At the opening plenary session of the 15th BRICS summit in Johannesburg, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday backed the expansion of the five-nation grouping and stated that India has given highest priority to countries of Global South under its G20 presidency.
“India fully supports the expansion of BRICS and welcomes move to move forward on this based on consensus,” PM Modi said during the open plenary session of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit.
The BRICS brings together five of the largest developing countries of the world, representing 41 per cent of the global population, 24 per cent of the global GDP and 16 per cent of the global trade. A total of 23 countries, including Saudi Arabia, UAE and Argentina, have expressed interest in joining the BRICS.
Significantly, India also proposed a permanent membership of G20 to the African Union. “I am confident that our BRICS partners will support this in G20,” PM Modi added.
Even as India prepares to make a historic landing on the moon with its Chandrayaan -3 mission, PM Modi called for establishing a BRICS space exploration consortium. “We are already working on the BRICS satellite constellation, but to move a step further, we should think about establishing a BRICS space exploration consortium,” he said at the leaders’s summit.
“We must make our societies future-ready to make BRICS future-ready,” Modi added. Highlighting that the BRICS summit “has embarked on a long and an amazing journey in the last two decades”, he further said that the “New Development Bank of BRICS is playing an important role in the development of the Global South.”
“To give a new path to the BRICS agenda, India had put forth suggestions on issues such as railway research network, close cooperation between MSMEs, online BRICS database and startup firms. I am happy that a lot of progress was made on these issues,” Modi continued.
