BRICS summit to focus on business council, development bank

Formation of two key institutions, the BRICS Business Council and the BRICS Development Bank were expected to headline the 5th BRICS Summit that was to be held on Wednesday in the South African port city of Durban.

Delegates meeting on Tuesday ahead of the main summit hailed the two institutions as the first steps of consolidating the multilateral body that was formed in 2009 to help bring balance to the global economic order.

"BRICS Development Bank will make the global financial sector more democratic," said Brazil's Minister for Development, Industry and Foreign Trade Fernando Pimentel.

BRICS Business Council will be unrevealed on Wednesday when the leaders of the BRICS countries China, Brazil, South Africa, India and Russia meet for the summit.

Each country will contribute five members to the council, officials said. The council is expected to drive private sector partnerships among the BRICS members.

The council is crucial for the trading bloc that is seeking to strengthen cooperation among the private sector and open markets to each other in order to ease movement of goods and people.

The BRICS Development Bank is coming in to finance the infrastructure, easing dependence the existing global financial organizations like the World Bank.

The development bank will finance projects among the members and across other African countries, officials said here.

But the modalities of the bank will also be unrevealed on Wednesday during the Heads of States meeting.

"Our counties are making their own statement that we are proactively engaged in balancing the global economy," said Anand Sharma, India's Minister of Commerce, Industry and Textiles.

"We are creating new axis of global development. The global economic order created several decades ago is now undergoing change and we believe for the better to make it more representative," said the minister.

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