Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mjkherjee and his South African counterpart Dr. Nkosazana Damini-Zuma in late February held a two-day seventh session of the South Africa-India Joint Ministerial Meeting in Pretoria. The two sides inked a couple of cooperation memoranda in the fields of agriculture, science and technology, tourism, tariffs and visa granting. Moreover, the two sides decided to institute some new cooperation committees.
In appraising the outcome of the meeting, media reports from both nations note that the two developing nations have stepped up their contact in their socio-economic realm and cite it as a new strategic height for their ties of strategic cooperation.
Strengthening bilateral cooperation to seek the common development represents a starting point to tighten their bilateral relations. India-South African business recorded new highs in recent years. Relevant statistics show their bilateral trade has increased from 26 million US dollars in 1995 to 2.3 billion dollars last year, posing a 90-fold rise in 12 years. As the two major economies, acknowledge scholars or economists in both India and South Africa, they are highly mutually complementary to each other with a wide, promising future. India has invested in such sectors as auto-making, iron and steel, and mining industries in South Africa, whereas the latter input much in India's infrastructure development.
The in-depth growth of economic ties between India and South Africa should be viewed in a much larger backdrop, that is, it constitutes an organic part of the India-Brazil-South Africa strategic partnership. Following announcements made at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2003, the governments of India, Brazil and South Africa decided to forge closer political and economic ties among them.
Back in June 2003, the three major developing nations commenced the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Dialogue Forum, a trans-regional strategic alliance with an aim of coordinating and adopting their shared stances with regard to the UN Security Council reform and a number of political-economic issues including the multilateral trade talks in the World Trade Organization (WTO).
To date, the forum has been turned into a highly-functional alliance to discuss and pinpoint solutions to common issues negatively affecting the growth of developing nations as well as a vital mechanism to expand the trade and investment between these three nations from a merely lax organ at beginning solely to give heed to macro-political issues.
With rapid advances made in recent years at the spur of the three developing nations, the IBSA Dialogue Forum has become a breach or breakthrough point unit to seek a more involvement with a greater decisive say on the global political and economical development. Indian economy has grown fast with its science and technology reaching the advanced world levels. Brazil is the largest South American nation bestowed with rich natural resources, and South Africa poses the biggest economy on the Africa Continent.
India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum is, in fact, a crystallization of what we often talk about "south-south cooperation". In other words, the three nations can do a lot together to improve the livelihoods of their people. Some analysts refer to it as a new mode of "south-south-south" cooperation or the "axis" of the south-south cooperation, which is far more viable and influential than groups consisting of more developing nations, such as the group - 77 and the non-alliance movement.
At present, the three nations are mulling the formation of forging the largest free trade zone on earth. The main agenda of the India's External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee's trip to South Africa was focused on first forming the India-South Africa Free Trade Zone. The tentative trade zone under consideration can not only promote the tripartite trade but link it to the regional economic organizations with three nations located in their respective regions. Namely, these organizations refer to the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC), which India belongs to, the South American Common Market that Brazil belongs to, and the South African Development Community with South Africa as a member of it. In view of the present circumstances, the establishment of the mega free trade zone has been restricted to some extent, as the three giant nations are far apart from one another and the transport costs of freight are far too costly.
Meanwhile, the institution of the mega trade zone has been faced with much restriction on imports as these three nations are somehow governed by ideologies with serious trade protection mentalities. On top of this, they have also been confronted with some thorny, headache problems detrimental to cooperation in the political sphere..
Consequently, most cooperation has not won any substantial results; and the tripartite cooperation has covered a lot of fields. If they truly institute a closer alliance, India, Brazil and South Africa should readily give up some of their respective interests and undertake more obligations, and this is of course by no means an easy thing to accomplish.
By People's Daily Online and its author is Ren Yan.
|
Comment
Tell A Friend
Print Format
Save Article