Engineering Export Promotion Council of India (EEPC) has welcomed India’s proposed action plan during the first meeting of BRICS Contact Group on Economic and Trade Issues (CGETI) held under its Chairship.
The action plan for 2021 would support a transparent and non-discriminatory, rules-based multilateral trading system in line with WTO vision.
It has also sought to put in place a framework for consumer protection in ecommerce and Non-Tariff Measures (NTM) Resolution Mechanism.
Given that Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) are expected to drive global recovery in the post-pandemic world, the roll-out of the action plan would accelerate trade and investment between India and other member states of the group.
The share of India’s Intra-BRICS trade to global trade has been around 14% to 15% and there is a huge potential for growth. Measures to further facilitate trade and investment would certainly help the engineering goods industry.
Commenting on the development, EEPC India Chairman Mahesh Desai said the organisation finds a lot of opportunity in widening the scope of economic engagement as the grouping of the five major emerging economies accounts for about 23% of thBRICSe world GDP.
“The five countries together comprise 42% of the world population and have 16% share in global trade,” said Mahesh Desai.
As bilateral trade with China accounts for the bulk of India’s trade with BRICS, the trade potential with other countries is sizable. In 2018-19, India’s total trade with BRICS was US$114.1 billion but out of this China’s share was US$ 87.1 billion.
