BRICS Summit: Modi holds talks with Sri Lanka's Sirisena, Bhutan PM Tobgay
Panaji: The eighth BRICS Summit that kicked off with an informal dinner of leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa in Goa on Saturday; resumed on Sunday.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and Bhutan PM Tshering Tobgay on Day 2 of the Summit, and held bilateral talks with each of them.
On the 2nd day, the leaders are slated to look at global economy, political situation and the challenge posed by terror outfits.
As many as 115 events have been planned for the summit, the theme of which is 'BRICS - Building Responsive, Inclusive and Collective Solutions'. The focus is on giving a fillip to people-to-people contact.
The events include two parliamentary meetings, 15 ministerial-level meetings, 56 senior officials' meeting of working groups and expert groups, 27 workshops, three track-two events and five events along business pillars.
Summit leaders will also look at BRICS cooperation with other emerging economies, issues of climate change, sustainable development goals (SDGs), financing for development and how to increase people-to-people contact. In this connection, India hosted the first ever tourism convention of all BRICS countries.
The summit will start with a restricted meeting of five BRICS leaders, followed by a plenary session, BIMSTEC Meeting, and BRICS and a BIMSTEC Outreach Meeting.
Also on the agenda is a group photo, a working luncheon, a meeting with the business council and acceptance of a report from them and a briefing by New Development Bank (NDB) President K.V. Kamath on completion of a year's functioning.
Prime Minister Modi will address the media in the presence of all leaders, and there will be a leaders' statement at the end.
In the evening, there will be a Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) meeting chaired by Prime Minister Modi, followed by a meeting of BRICS and BIMSTEC leaders. And the final event would be a BRICS-BIMSTEC outreach dinner.
"During the last two summits we have had a BRICS Outreach, in which regional countries are invited by the host. Because of our Look East policy we decided that the group that we will invite is BIMSTEC and we have confirmations from all the BIMSTEC partners," said Amar Sinha, Secretary, Economic Relations (ER), Ministry of External Affairs, while briefing the media on the upcoming BRICS Summit in New Delhi on October 7.
"Now we are looking at creating BRICS Agricultural Research platform. We are also negotiating a BRICS Railway Research network. We have actually agreed on creating a BRICS Sports Council. In this connection, I may point out that the first Under-17 BRICS Football Tournament was started on 5th October in Goa, it will finish on the 15th. The three other agreements that have already been agreed are, MoU on Environmental Cooperation, Regulation on Customs Cooperation and an MoU on Cooperation between Diplomatic Academies of BRICS. There are number of other ideas that are being discussed but since we have not reached an agreement, I am not listing them out here, perhaps next year you will hear about them," Sinha added.
