The meeting's significance

In an interview with Xinhua, Indian political analyst Ajay Singh said the BRIC countries are emerging market economies of global scale, and they are playing a more important role in reshaping today's global economic structure.

He said the upcoming BRIC gathering, which is very necessary, comes at a right time when the global economic structure has changed a lot and the world economic cooperation has seen a stronger sign of multilateralism.

Brazil's Jaguaribe said the forthcoming BRIC meeting, while unlikely to come up with concrete measures, marks the beginning of the functioning of an inter-active mechanism, for there are great potentials for their cooperation and similar summit meetings are expected to be held on a regular basis.

He said one of the most important results expected to come out of the upcoming BRIC summit would be an agenda for the four's future cooperation.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov told Xinhua that Russia has made it clear that leaders and experts in these four countries have all realized the importance of continued cooperation on the basis of this platform.

The world's emerging economies, including the four BRIC countries, will have conflicts of interests with the developed nations, said Lev Frainkman, an expert at Russia's Institute for the Economy in Transition.

Therefore, it would be very important to have consultations and coordination within the BRIC framework in order to ease such conflicts, he told Xinhua, noting that the BRIC countries should also make it clear to the rest of the world that the BRIC countries' rising standing would not pose a threat to others.

Cooperation prospects

Jaguaribe said BRIC was interested in expanding bilateral trade. He said that trade protectionism was not the solution to the financial crisis. Most countries try to avoid it, including Brazil and China whose leaders have vowed to enhance bilateral exchange and cooperation.

Sergei Aleksashenko from Moscow's Higher School of Economics (HSE) said that the BRIC countries can pool their respective resources to seek common development in such areas as the aviation industry and software development.

Indian political scientist S.K. Gupta said that the four nations have very distinct economic development characteristics, so they can supplement each other in various fields such as finance, energy, services, technology, agriculture, environmental protection and food safety, as well as in multilateral trade talks at the World Trade Organization (WTO).

He Shuangrong, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that tackling the financial crisis and combating trade protectionism are undoubtedly among the most urgent tasks which require cooperation among the BRIC nations. The BRIC countries should exert greater efforts to push for the establishment of a more equitable international economic order, He said.

(Xinhua News Agency June 15, 2009)