Facilitating greater trade, investment and industrialisation is a key part of this strategy. This time South Africa’s economic relations with Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) have featured prominently given these countries’ phenomenal trade growth, but the experience has not been solely positive for South Africa.
Here are three ways South Africa can change that:
- Capitalise on its hosting of BRICS in 2018 to draw attention to the underlying business opportunities in its own region, as well as its efforts to support the development of regional value chains that could link into global value chains.
- Ensuring that BRICS commitments made in 2015 and 2016 are implemented. These include creating a greater enabling environment for micro, small and medium enterprises; promoting trade in services sectors; intellectual property rights cooperation; and e-commerce collaboration.
- Establish a monitoring system to track commitments and implementation; as well as create a centralised repository of BRICS-related documents and agreements (beyond the University of Toronto-hosted BRICS Information Centre).
Read Cyril Prinsloo’s full paper published by the Institute for Global Dialogue.
