Prime Minister of India - Dr. Manmohan Singh

PM's opening remarks at the Plenary Session of the BRIC Summit

I wish to take this opportunity to once again thank His Excellency President Medvedev for hosting the first BRIC Summit.

We have just concluded useful discussions in the restricted format on some of the major issues before us.

When we review the global financial and economic situation, it is worth recalling that when we met at the Second G-20 Leaders' Summit in April this year we realised that the global downturn was much more severe than what we had anticipated in Washington D.C. in November last year.

In London we were successful in agreeing on several short term measures to infuse greater liquidity, make good the decline that has taken place in capital flows to developing countries by providing adequate resources to the international financial institutions, and agreeing on a broad direction for improvement in the regulatory and supervisory structure for the world's financial system. We also agreed on the need to develop an effective early warning system which can identify the build up of risks which may threaten global financial stability.

There was a unanimous view that protectionism or restrictions on the free flow of trade and persons are counterproductive, and pose a particular threat to recovery in the developing world. The stark collapse in world trade has heightened the importance of an early completion of the Doha Round of talks keeping in mind its development dimension.

We also recognised the continuing need to redefining the role of institutions of global economic and financial governance to deal with the problems of today and to reflect contemporary realities. The broadening of representation in the Financial Stability Forum and the Basle Committee on Banking Supervision, the two key standard setting bodies, has been a useful development in this context.

We were able to identify areas for further improvement in the functioning of multilateral institutions. In the case of the IMF, these related to its surveillance function, its lending role, augmentation of the IMF's resources and governance reforms. In the case of the World Bank, three specific points of action were identified - (i) a substantial increase in lending, (ii) a review of the Bank's lending capacity and capital adequacy and (iii) enabling large developing countries to access required levels of finance through increased lending limits so that they can support recovery in their regions.

The important issue today is to implement the decisions that we have taken. Finance Ministers and Central Bank representatives of BRIC countries have met and identified the areas where our efforts should be focused. Our countries should also keep in contact with each other in the run up to the next G-20 Leaders Summit in Pittsburgh.

Our cooperation in the G-20 process must be backed up by cooperation in the real economy. The volume of trade among BRIC countries has grown rapidly in recent years. Intra-BRIC investments have also grown. We should consider the establishment of a BRIC Joint Business Forum which can identify areas for cooperation such as science and technology, energy, agriculture, aviation, pharmaceuticals and services.

In India, we have launched a number of fiscal stimulus packages including additional public spending, amounting to over 3% of our GDP. Our monetary policy initiatives have been targeted towards maintaining a comfortable liquidity position and ensuring that credit delivery remains on track. Our banking system remains well regulated, capitalized and profitable.

The Joint Statement and the Statement on Global Food Security that we will be adopting later today provide a road-map for our future work.

I wish to congratulate His Excellency President Medvedev for his guidance and leadership during this Summit, and for the successful outcomes that we have reached today.

Thank you.