BRICS, SCO summits to yield pragmatic results: Chinese experts

Beijing: The BRICS Summit and a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation to be held in Russia this week would yield pragmatic results including a new development bank, Chinese experts have said. BRICS, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa will evolve into practical cooperation from mere discussions, they said.

China expects that the BRICS group of emerging economies will make progress in putting into operation the BRICS New Development Bank and emergency reserve arrangement at the BRICS Summit held in Ufa, Russia, from July 8-9, Chinese Vice

Foreign Minister Cheng Guoping said. Chinese President Xi Jinping will attend the seventh leaders meeting of the BRICS and the 15th Meeting of the Council of the Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Member States.

"Advancing the new development bank is the foremost goal since it can help shift the cooperation from mere view- exchanging to more practical one," Zhu Jiejin, an associate professor at the Centre for BRICS Studies of Fudan University told state-run Global Times.

The five member countries will cooperate on different projects through investing in the bank, he said. The summit will also deepen consensus on major initiatives such as the Belt and Road (Silk Road) Initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) while serving as a platform to voice a uniform stance on major international agendas such as climate change and IMF reform, Cheng said.

Following the conclusion of the summit, the SCO meeting will be held on Thursday and Friday, during which the drafting of its development strategy up until 2025 and the admission standard to the SCO were to be given priority, according to experts.

The development strategy will be approved and a border defence cooperation agreement will be signed by the SCO member states, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan Cheng was quoted by the China News Service as saying. India and Pakistan will start the process of joining the SCO, Chen said.

"Granting membership to more countries in South Asia and the Middle East, which had been long impeded, will further expand the SCO's influence," said Xia Yishan, a research fellow of Central Asian studies at the China Institutes of International Studies.