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South Africa's businesses ready for BRICS
Last Updated: 2013-03-27 08:38 | Xinhua
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South Africa's business community leaders said the country is ready to take up opportunities arising from its membership of BRICS, a multilateral body that also includes China, India, Russia and Brazil.

BRICS is encouraging greater cooperation of private sector in undertaking joint investment activities and taking opportunities expected from opening of markets to each other.

"BRICS companies are now taking their place in the world and South Africa is ready," said Ndaba Ntsele, the President of Black Business Council.

The BRICS Business Council is expected to spearhead private sector cooperation by facilitating exchange of information and confidence building among the entrepreneurs.

While the BRICS objective is to bring greater balance to the control of global economic order now dominated by the west, the body is seeking to deepen economic cooperation among its members and in particular propel the participation of the private sector to take up bigger role in expected trade boom.

Already, trade among the BRICS has increased six times in the last decade hitting 360 billion U. S. dollars last year, officials said here at the opening of the fifth BRICS summit in South Africa' s port city of Durban on Tuesday.

South Africa's business leaders said BRICS membership is an opportunity for the country to increase its level of industrialization, by borrowing technology from higher industrialized member countries and seeking to increase their market penetration to those countries.

"We are excited by the opportunity of BRICS as we strive to develop our country," said Ntsele. He said priorities for South Africa are to create more jobs, increase healthcare access, education opportunities, reduce corruption and enhance rural development.

"We now have a bigger market and our rich mineral resource offers us a unique opportunity to contribute to BRICS resource wealth," he said. "We shall take this lifetime opportunity to create more jobs and increase industrialisation."

South Africa is the continent's most industrialized country but still, its level of industrialization is much less than that of other BRICS members. For instance, most of its mineral resources are exported unprocessed and it is yet to achieve an appropriate level of agriculture processing.

President of the Business Unity South Africa (BUSA) Jabu Mabuza called on South Africa's business community to move with urgency and tap opportunities presented by BRICS.

"The proposed BRICS Development Bank is a major opportunity that will catapult investments in the bloc. If anyone has not seen why this bloc is the future, I send my condolences," he said.

The business leaders however said for the private sector of the BRICS members to benefit, certain challenges like opening of the markets to financial and retail enterprises must be addressed.

"More efforts should be directed to opening our markets and removing the non-tariff barriers," said Mabuza. He gave an example of a trade arrangement between China and South Africa where South Africa has identified 10 products that are given priority market access to the Chinese market saying such innovative trade arrangements should be replicated among the members.

The business leaders said they will also play a role a facilitating trade between BRICS and the rest of the continent, on one hand enabling Africa to export more to other BRICS members and also enabling the BRICS members to access more African markets.

South Africa will lobby for transnational infrastructure projects financed by BRICS Development Bank to enable more African countries benefit while involving companies from other BRICS members as joint contractors of those projects.

"We are not a gateway for BRICS to Africa but a facilitator of foreign direct investments flow to Africa through BRICS," said Mabuza.

The South African business community will also be seeking to rope in private sector from other African countries as part of the wider effort to pass on the dividends of BRICS to the rest of Africa. The country is keen not to be seen as isolating the rest of the continent in the multilateral trade bloc, in line with the African Union ideas of renaissance and Pan-Africanism agreed during the 20th African Union Summit in Addis Ababa in January 2013.

South Africa is the smallest of the BRICS economies with a gross domestic product (GDP) of 390 billion dollars compared to China's 8.2 trillion dollars, Brazil's 2.4 trillion dollars, Russia's 1.9 billion dollars and India's 1.24 billion dollars.

 

 

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