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BRICS Long-Term Strategy

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It is important that BRICS countries strengthen their coordination and 

communication with other international and regional organisations; actively participate 

in major activities held by the G20, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, 

the International Epizootic Office, the Consultative Group on International  

Agricultural Research etc.; coordinate their views on food security, environmental 

protection, trade promotion and other hot agricultural topics; and find common 

ground to continuously contribute to safeguarding the world’s food security.

Apart from enhancing cooperation among the BRICS countries, they also 

need to improve their coordination and cooperation on agriculture with other 

countries and work with them to reduce the number of people living in extreme 

poverty, make positive contributions to achieving the UN Millennium Development  

Goals as soon as possible and promote stability, prosperity and development 

throughout the world.

3.2 Infrastructure

As the New Development Bank is now established, the BRICS nations should 

continue to innovate in their financing methods to achieve diversified financial 

channels and to offer financial support to basic infrastructure construction. 

The participation of private capital is also welcomed in joint efforts, which is 

a priority for all BRICS members. For more detailed information, please refer 

to chapter 4. 

3.3 Energy 

Energy plays a very important role in developing countries’ development path. 

Given the political instability in many parts of the world and large fluctuations 

in energy prices, many countries have sought energy security as part of their 

national strategic goals. Among the BRICS countries, Russia is a major exporter 

of energy resources, while China and India are major importers. BRICS should 

strive to share these energy security goals and help maintain the global stability 

of energy prices. 

The BRICS countries could establish an energy research association (e.g. an 

energy policy institute and fuel reserve bank) to coordinate research and development 

on traditional and renewable energy sources and consider the feasibility of an energy 

bank to leverage intra-BRICS energy trade. Through international cooperation, 

BRICS countries should ensure that the development of nuclear energy is done in 

a way consistent with relevant safety standards.

The BRICS countries could also work together to explore a new path of 

industrialisation, including smart transportation, information and communication, 

as well as safety regulation of the energy sector.

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3.4 Information and communication technology, e-commerce and smart society

To foster competitiveness and complementarity among BRICS economies, one 

important component is the exchange of information, not only in terms of 

experiences but also in terms of actual business opportunities in each country. 

This can be achieved, for example, by means of a cross-department, trans-regional, 

multi-industry and trans-boundary national-level electronic commerce network, 

using the latest technology available.

3.5 Urbanisation

BRICS should strive to establish an urbanisation partnership among its member 

states at an early date. BRICS countries should work with each other and find joint 

responses to economic, social and environmental challenges during the process 

of urbanisation and share experiences through this platform. Chapter 3 discusses 

this issue in more detail.

3.6 Small and medium-sized enterprises

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are important actors in the 

economies of BRICS countries, in that they account for a good deal of the 

creation of job opportunities, at the same time that they are instrumental in 

providing diversification of the productive structure and trade composition 

of external trade flows.

It is, however, quite costly for SMEs to access information about external 

opportunities, as it is also costly to cope with the initial costs of their involvement 

in external trade activities. It is, therefore, a challenge for BRICS countries to 

provide the means that might facilitate the operations of their SMEs in 

intra-group activities.

BRICS should encourage their SME associations and development centres 

to build contacts, and motivate them to collaborate via staff training, information 

consultation and other forums.

3.7 BRICS in South-South cooperation 

The role of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa as emerging leaders 

in international development cooperation is changing significantly and rapidly. 

Over the last decade, the BRICS nations have increased their financial and technical 

assistance to developing countries, and established distinct ways and means of 

economic cooperation, especially through South–South cooperation with 

low-income countries. The impact on low-income countries through trade, FDI 

and development financing is significant, and coherent with the BRICS aim of 

striving for more political influence in the world.

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4 RECOMMENDATIONS

4.1 Overall

To achieve the post-2015 development goals, the BRICS nations should: 

•  maintain their fast economic growth and lead as the engine of the world’s 

economic development; 

•  expand trade among themselves and with the rest of the world; 
•  adjust their economic growth patterns while strengthening their 

traditional competitive advantages to seek technological innovations 

to drive the economy; 

•  realise an economic transformation and establish a new economic 

growth engine; 

•  improve their position in the global value chain and global production 

networks; 

•  actively cope with global climate change, develop clean energy technologies 

and realise the sustainable development of the economy; 

•  gradually reduce income inequality and eliminate social injustice to 

achieve the inclusive development goals; and

•  maintain economic stability by improving the industrial safety 

management system.

BRICS countries should emphasise comprehensive multilateral agree-

ments on matters including goods, services, competition, intellectual property 

and short-term labour flows, to promote open markets between them and 

further amplify the impact of trade liberalisation on investment, production 

and employment.

BRICS countries should enhance their cooperation in supervising international 

finance, optimise the bilateral supervision mechanism by instituting a coordinating 

mechanism among financial regulators to improve their regulation measures, 

improve market transparency and decrease the asymmetry of information.

BRICS countries should enhance their governance cooperation, promote 

coordination among their monetary authorities in managing cross-border capital 

flows, work together to build a supervision mechanism for the macro-economy 

and financial markets and build a regional international financial security net to 

step up their monitoring of global capital flows and to avoid the cross-border 

transmission of financial risks.

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BRICS countries should increase their engagement with other countries, 

particularly developing countries and emerging market economies, as well as with 

international and regional organisations, with a view to fostering cooperation and 

solidarity with all nations and people.

4.2 On trade and investment

BRICS countries should work together to identify promising areas, sectors and 

markets that offer a potential expansion in trade in goods and services for 

mutual benefit.

A platform for sharing trade and economic information among BRICS 

countries could be built. Through this platform, enterprises would be able to 

understand trade and economic policies in each BRICS country, share market 

information with each other and establish broader trade and economic ties so that 

trade between the BRICS countries can grow soundly and rapidly.

The BRICS nations are supposed to encourage their trade and investment fa-

cilitation agencies to establish closer ties. They should also provide policy support to 

customs authorities to work with each other. In addition, it is hoped that the BRICS 

countries should strengthen exchanges and cooperation in the field of high and new 

technology. They should also facilitate mutual investments by small enterprises.

BRICS countries should expand their cooperation to exhibit their products 

and services and to develop other trade and investment promotion platforms. 

They should improve the transparency of the trade and investment environment 

in accordance with laws and regulations in each country. 

BRICS countries should study the possibility of establishing bilateral or 

multilateral trade and investment dispute mediation and arbitration agencies to 

resolve disputes and conflicts in trade and investment activities.

BRICS countries should consider the establishment of a comprehensive 

multilateral agreement that includes goods, services and supplies, competition, 

intellectual property rights and short-term labour flows, promote open markets 

among the BRICS countries, and further enlarge the impact of trade liberalisation 

on investment, production and employment, so as to create the best and most 

favourable environment for expanding the global value chain.

BRICS nations could launch initiatives to encourage their leading companies 

to take the lead in global value chains, while assisting their SMEs to share the 

benefit from the evolution of global value chains, upgrade their industries and 

local economies and create more jobs and opportunities. BRICS must support 

research aimed at understanding the impacts of integrating into global value chains 

on growth, productivity and job creation.

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Among other initiatives to foster trade, and as stated in the Fortaleza Declaration,  

there should be a pool of capacities in the insurance and reinsurance market, as well 

a formal agreement among export credit and guarantees agencies, as mentioned 

in the Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation among BRICS Export 

Credit and Guarantees Agencies. BRICS countries should also study the benefits 

of a possible Customs Mutual Assistance Agreement.

4.3 On financial and related issues

The BRICS banking sector could play an important role in promoting trade and 

investment through innovative trade financing facilities, export credit arrange-

ments, and countercyclical measures which ensure that trade financing is not 

adversely affected during business downturns, as was the case during the recent 

global financial crisis.

As trade and investment have grown rapidly over the past few years among 

the BRICS countries, greater use of local currencies in trade settlement and related 

financing activities would be beneficial to all. Financial institutions from the BRICS 

nations should expand local currency settlement and lending to facilitate the countries’ 

economic growth as well as to enhance the influence of their local currencies.

BRICS nations should explore the prospect of trade settlement in domestic 

currencies. This would help mitigate the negative impact of currency volatility 

on trade. 

BRICS countries could establish a financial market development and stability 

fund to develop a BRICS bond market.

BRICS countries should investigate the merits of signing an investment 

protection agreement to promote mutual investment among BRICS countries.

According to the Fortaleza Declaration (Art. 17), there should be a cooperative 

approach on issues related to tax administration and cooperation in the international 

forums targeting tax evasion.

4.4 On other issues to foster competitiveness and complementarity

BRICS countries should strengthen exchanges and cooperation in high-tech fields 

when conducting mutual investment, and provide a platform for entrepreneurs 

from each country, through which they will be able to launch product and industry 

dialogues and gradually achieve a clustering advantage in business management, 

technological innovation and platform marketing.

Promoting exchanges and cooperation between SMEs through a cooperation 

platform could provide more opportunities for the BRICS nations to realise both 

upstream and downstream extensions in value chains. BRICS nations should