IBSA sets $15bn trade target
17 October 2008
India, Brazil and South Africa set themselves a target of increasing trade between the three countries to US$15-billion by 2010 - more than double the estimated current level of around $7-billion - at the third India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA) summit in New Delhi this week.
The three-day meeting of business leaders, trade ministers and heads of state concluded on Wednesday with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Brazilian President Luiz da Silva and South African President Kgalema Motlanthe telling a press conference that the three countries had agreed to urgently coordinate their responses to the global financial crisis.
"We discussed and analysed the current financial crisis," Motlanthe told journalists, "and agreed we need to direct our ministers of finance, central bank governors, and ministers of trade and industry, to come together and develop an adequate response to this crisis."
Also high on the agenda, Motlanthe said, was the consolidation and expansion of trade among the three countries making up IBSA, a trilateral developmental initiative first launched in 2003.
Among the seven new trilateral agreements signed at this week's summit were a cooperation agreement on trade facilitation - covering standards and regulations - as well as two five-year action plans on air and maritime transport.
While the civil aviation action plan aims to increase airline frequencies between India, Brazil and South Africa, the maritime action plan seeks to develop a trans-shipment corridor between the three countries.
Addressing the summit on Wednesday, Motlanthe said these agreements aimed "substantially to increase investment in building, upgrading and maintaining transport infrastructure in our respective countries."
For IBSA to deliver on a maritime corridor, Motlanthe said, each country would have to commit resources to developing new ports and port infrastructure or improving existing infrastructure.
South Africa, for its part, had committed to an investment programme that included upgrading the Durban container terminal - the busiest on the African continent - as well as construction of the deep-sea port of Nqura at Coega, near Port Elizabeth, "as our intended trans-shipment hub linking our three continents".
The creation of maritime and aviation hubs linking India, Brazil and South Africa was "absolutely important given that our three countries represent a market worth more than US$2-trillion; that in 2005 our trilateral co-operation placed us among the top 15 developing countries in the world; and that the combined value of our trade more than tripled between 1994 and 2004."
IBSA, Motlanthe said, "today represents to the world a 'new trade geography' in which each of our countries uses the other two as gateways for intensifying intercontinental trade and investment links."
SAinfo reporter
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