By Li Hongmei
The two-day BRICS summit opened in Durban, South Africa, on Tuesday night in a gathering that will focus on issues related to the creation of a joint development bank and a joint council of entrepreneurs.
Additionally, high on the agenda are proposals for global economic recovery.
The heads of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa will also discuss the creation of a research center to deal with projects pertaining to IT, energy, biology and health care.
China is represented at what is the fifth summit of the BRICS states by President Xi Jinping, who is on his first overseas trip since assuming office and just wrapped up the state visits to Russia and Tanzania respectively. President Xi will also meet the other leaders on the sidelines of the BRICS summit.
"The pace of growth of the global economy doesn't represent confident post-crisis recovery. In this situation, much depends on concerted actions by the BRICS states to boost mutual trade and investment ties, and lobby for the joint agenda within the G20 ," Putin's aide Yury Ushakov said in a briefing before the summit.
The summit would also take up international political issues such as the crisis in Syria, the Iranian nuclear program and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The BRICS countries stand for conflicts to be settled by political and diplomatic means and reject policies of pressure and infringement of the sovereignty of other states,
The summit is expected to issue an "eThekwini Declaration" and "eThekwini Plan of Action" - eThekwini is the name of the municipality where the event will be held.
The declaration will contain an assessment of the current global political and economic situation and reflect the general principles of the BRICS countries on key issues of multilateral cooperation.
The plan of action sets concrete tasks for BRICS for the coming year and includes new promising areas of interaction.
The summit would result in an agreement to co-finance green and infrastructural projects in African countries and in a declaration on the institution of a BRICS consortium of expert centers.
