Following is the text of the address of Shri Pranab Mukherjee, Union Finance Minister at the BRICS meeting in Paris on Feb 18th, 2011-

At the outset let me extend a very warm welcome to our South Africa Colleague to our platform. The BRIC platform has demonstrated to the world that although the BRICS are located in different continents, and have vastly different economic structures, they can come together and cooperate to enhance global economic outcomes. And now with South Africa joining us, we are further enriched further and enabled to take a more cohesive policy stance in various forums.

G 20 Framework and mutual assessment

The global recovery is still fragile and uneven. We are faced with significant downside risks arising from tensions in the euro area periphery spreading to other regions, high commodity prices and inflationary conditions in our countries. Policy coordination is critical for sustaining the economic recovery. The crisis showed us the fruit of working together for policy cooperation. This is just as true for the recovery.

International economic policy coordination though the G20 framework for strong, sustainable and balanced growth holds the key to sustaining the global recovery. The Leader’s Declaration at Seoul clearly focused on ‘promoting external sustainability’ within the spirit of multilateral cooperation. Our Leaders were careful enough to recognise that such an exercise should focus on persistent and excessive imbalances. As co-chair, we are concerned that the task of preparing guidelines and the ensuing MAP process should not be seen as one that would be used to shape country specific policies in a manner that one size fits all. The objective is clearly of framing a set of ‘indicative’ guidelines that all G 20 countries will agree upon in the interest of reducing excessive external imbalances that stand in the way of raising global growth on a sustainable basis.

Most members have agreed to a 2 stage approach in the Working Group. However, a G 20 style consensus is yet to be arrived at. Some outstanding issues regarding agreeing on indicators also remain. At the same time we need to proceed keeping in view the spirit of cooperation within a multilateral framework and recognizing that this is needed not only in the interest of the global economy but also in the interest of individual economies regardless of their size or their current rate of growth.

We also need to be cognizant of another kind of glaring developmental imbalance, including the sheer lack of physical and social infrastructure in developing countries and LICs. The Multilateral Development Banks have a wealth of experience and expertise in the area of infrastructure financing. The high level panel on infrastructure financing being set up under G20 Development agenda could, inter alia, focus on the manner in which global surpluses could be productively channeled into financing infrastructure investment in developing countries through the modality of Multilateral Development Banks. We should stand committed to ensure sufficient resources for MDBs.

BRIC Study

Friends, a decision was taken in the Meeting of ‘BRIC Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors’ in London on September 4, 2009, wherein the BRIC Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors resolved to commission a study by their Finance Ministries and Central Banks regarding where the world economy will be in the near future and the role of the BRIC countries. To take this special relationship further forward, I propose to include South Africa in this study.

The report is a joint and concerted effort by BRIC countries. So even though India is anchoring and is in charge of compilation and writing the report, inputs and comments have been sought from all the BRIC countries in every stage of the study. However, I am informed that greater cooperation from our Russian Colleagues is desired in the drafting of the report. I sincerely expect that the report will bring BRICS countries to work together for stronger cooperation and provide the platform for sharing best practices and challenges. Having agreed on the design of the report during the first workshop held in New Delhi in September, for which the first draft of the report was circulated in December 2010, we should start working on the final stage of the study by actually finalizing the draft report and providing comments to the anchor, which at present have be given only by Brazil working group members.

Friends, for completing the task by March end 2011 and its final release in April 2011 during the BRICS Summit in Beijing, we need your cooperation. Finally, I would like to appeal to the Working Group members of each country to produce a quality document that our Leaders should be proud of.

BY/NCJ

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(Release ID :69916)