BRICS commerce ministers called for resisting protectionist tendencies, explored detailed measures of trade cooperation among BRICS countries and underlined the importance of stable oil price for global economy recovery during the second BRICS commerce ministers' meeting held here on March 28, a day ahead of the forth BRICS summit.

The Joint Press Release of the meeting said that the ministers directed their officials to explore ways and means for enhancing and furthering intra-BRICS cooperation especially in the areas of customs, trade facilitation, SME investment, trade data collection, e-commerce and intellectual property rights.

Russia's proposal for setting up BRICS Projects Platforms for joint projects development was also noted in the ministers' meeting.

In strengthening the intra BRICS trade, Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming said in the press conference that China's domestic demand will grow dramatically and it is estimated that China will import goods of 10 trillion U.S. dollars in the next five years, and is willing to import more from other BRICS countries.

He said that prices of crude oil and bulk commodity rise in a drastic manner, all this has negatively impact the processes of global economic recovery, and China also suffers. "Therefore while we deal with geopolitical issues, we must bear in mind the difficulties the world economy is now facing as well as the urgent task to revive world economy. High oil price is definitely not good news to the world, including developed countries," he said.

Noting that China has always respected UN resolutions, Chen Deming pointed out that China will also develop normal economic and trade relations with other countries, including Iran.

"China is not obliged to obey any domestic laws or rules of any particular country, also we don't want to see interference and negative implication of any country's domestic law on multilateral affairs," he said.

Indian minister of commerce and industry Anand Sharma echoed it and said energy security is very important to India.

"Iran has been and continues to be one of an important resource of India's energy supply," he said.

Noting India is an oil import dependant country, he said spiraling oil price has put both Indian's credit account and current account under stress, "therefore we look at the matter ( Iran oil embargo) in a pragmatic way, remaining within the ambit of UN resolution."

During the meeting, ministers also emphasized the need to resist protectionist tendencies. They noted that subsidies in agriculture by some developed countries continue to distort trade and undermine the food security of developing countries and expressed deep concern at the current impasse in the Doha Development Round.

Reiterating the great importance they attached to an open and rule-based multilateral trading system, BRICS ministers underlined the central role of the WTO in safeguarding interests of developing countries.