New Delhi, September 11: Union Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal called for deeper, more resilient and balanced trade among BRICS countries, telling the opening session of the BRICS Business Forum that the grouping now accounts for nearly a quarter of global trade. He said member and partner countries needed greater market access, diversified supply chains and simpler regulatory procedures to unlock the bloc’s economic potential.
The opening session was also addressed by Russia’s Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, Minister of State for Commerce & Industry and Electronics & IT Jitin Prasada, and Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal. Goyal said he hoped the forum would produce significant outcomes and take business partnerships among BRICS countries to the next level.
Goyal said India was an important pillar of intra-BRICS trade, pointing to its strength in engineering goods and electronics, which make up the largest share of the country’s manufactured exports, as well as its position as the “pharmacy of the world”. He said India saw BRICS as an important market for these and other products it wanted to take to the world as a trusted partner.
Open markets and cut non-tariff barriers, Goyal says
Goyal said trade should not become an impediment to growth or people’s well-being in any member state, and called on BRICS countries to open their markets to each other’s products, including raw materials and critical minerals. He said supply chains would only be resilient if they ran both ways.
Citing data that non-tariff measures impose higher export costs than tariffs themselves for 88 per cent of countries, Goyal called for easier market access and urged BRICS members and partners to simplify regulatory procedures and speed up clearance of consignments.
He also called for greater cooperation in agriculture, urging countries to back agri-tech startups working on solutions for farmers across BRICS nations to support food security. He said services markets should be opened to each other in a real sense, with easier movement of professionals and mutual recognition of professional qualifications.
Link payment systems and trade in local currencies
Goyal highlighted India’s digital public infrastructure, saying the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) now processes more than 250 billion transactions a year, over half of all digital transactions by volume worldwide, and is accepted in 11 countries. He urged BRICS member and partner countries to link their payment systems, promote trade in each other’s local currencies and work together on emerging technologies.
Highlighting women’s role in India’s startup ecosystem, Goyal said more than 45 per cent of the country’s 250,000 recognised startups had at least one woman partner or director, and that two-thirds of small loans given out over the past decade had gone to women entrepreneurs. Referring to this week’s meeting of the BRICS Women’s Business Alliance in New Delhi, he said he had urged the Alliance to ensure women-led enterprises took part in every BRICS exhibition and trade fair.
Goyal said India’s strengths across agriculture, pharmaceuticals, engineering, electronics, automobiles and services offered scope for joint innovation and stronger global value chains, and called for closer links between startup ecosystems. He said India’s goal of becoming a developed nation by 2047, under the Viksit Bharat vision, left room to deepen cooperation with BRICS partners.
Jaishankar says resilience is central to next phase of BRICS
Jaishankar said this year marked 20 years of institutionalised BRICS cooperation, during which the grouping had evolved in membership, agenda and mechanisms. He said India’s chairship had carried this forward through the theme of resilience, innovation, cooperation and sustainability, priorities he called especially relevant as the global order goes through volatility driven by geopolitical conflicts, pandemics, climate disruption and rapid digitisation.
He said the BRICS Business Council and Women’s Business Alliance had helped bring industry and entrepreneurs into the BRICS process, and that supply chain connectivity, trade facilitation, agri-technology, MSMEs and women-led enterprises had all become priorities. He called for stronger self-reliance alongside competitive market practices, dependable logistics and transparent trade and investment, and pointed to digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence, fintech and advanced manufacturing as major opportunities, alongside questions of access, standards and trust.
Jaishankar said India’s chairship had worked to strengthen the BRICS incubator network and Startup Innovation Fund, and that the Business Forum’s most useful role would be to bring a business perspective to the next phase of BRICS cooperation ahead of the leaders’ meeting.
Prasada highlights AI and semiconductor cooperation
Jitin Prasada said the forum offered a chance to convert the strength of BRICS economies into concrete commercial results, highlighting artificial intelligence as an area that could improve productivity and incomes for individuals and MSMEs, provided access to computing power was ensured, particularly for the Global South. He called for greater technology exchange in AI while keeping the United Nations central to its governance.
On semiconductors, Prasada pointed to India’s Semiconductor Mission 2.0, which carries incentives worth about USD 13 billion, and called for collaboration to build out the full semiconductor ecosystem. He also highlighted digital public infrastructure and data centres as areas for cooperation, and called on BRICS countries to co-develop and co-invest, with more resources for research, development and startups.
Trade with BRICS has grown fourteen-fold since 2003, says Agrawal
Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal said trade among BRICS countries had grown from USD 84 billion in 2003 to nearly USD 1.2 trillion in 2024. He called for preserving and strengthening the multilateral trading system with the WTO at its core, and for supporting MSMEs with affordable working capital, pointing to the Jaipur Consensus as a foundation for a possible common BRICS mechanism.
Agrawal said global value chains could be strengthened through BRICS Connect, business-to-business partnerships, an annual BRICS Trade and Investment Expo and digital trade documentation, along with deeper sectoral cooperation including in healthcare. He called for stronger economic integration under the BRICS Economic Partnership Strategy 2030, and wished the forum every success.