South Africa’s National Assembly Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula will today lead a multiparty parliamentary delegation to the 8th BRICS Parliamentary Forum (BRICS PF) virtual meeting.
The meeting will be hosted by the National People’s Congress of China as they are chairing the BRICS. South Africa is the next in line to host the 9th BRICS PF in 2023.
The theme of the meeting is “Leveraging the role of the legislature to foster high-quality BRICS partnership”.
The BRICS PF is constituted by the National Congress of the Federative Republic of Brazil, the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, the Parliament of the Republic of India, the National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China, and the Parliament of the Republic of South Africa.
The forum was founded to strengthen and promote contacts at the leadership level of chambers, committees and groups of parliamentarians; perform inter-parliamentary exchanges and hold regular expert consultations; and create and develop new inter-parliamentary co-operation mechanisms.
India, when chairing in 2016, hosted the 1st BRICS Women Parliamentarians’ Forum in Jaipur during which the parliamentarians adopted the Jaipur Declaration. The declaration called for “commitment to intensify co-operation and strengthen parliamentary strategic partnerships on all three dimensions of sustainable development, fostering gender equality and women empowerment”.
In November last year, Mapisa-Nqakula called on the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) PF to unite and rededicate their resolve in finding solutions to challenges of economic stagnation, rising unemployment and poverty.
Trade with BRICS countries
Trade in goods of east China’s coastal city of Xiamen with BRICS countries reached 47.9 billion yuan (about US$7bn) in the first seven months of this year, up 20.7% from the same period last year, according to the Xiamen Customs.
Xiamen’s exports with BRICS countries amounted to 15.3bn billion yuan, while imports reached 32.6bn yuan during the period, up 28.1% and 17.5%, respectively, year on year.
IOL