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New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday urged BRICS to translate its growing economic weight into stronger trade and investment ties, proposing three measurable targets: removing the grouping’s top 10 trade barriers, helping 100 startups expand into other member markets each year and creating 1,000 new business partnerships annually.
Addressing the BRICS Business Forum in India, Modi called on the BRICS Business Council to pursue these goals and assess the results every year.
“We must review our progress on these three parameters every year,” he said.
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The Prime Minister also underscored the importance of maritime security as geopolitical conflicts disrupt trade routes and supply chains.
“Global trade can only progress if sea lanes are secure, supply routes remain open, and seafarers are safe. Therefore, India is a staunch supporter of freedom of navigation and the safety of seafarers,” he said.
His remarks came against the backdrop of conflicts affecting energy shipments and other trade through vital sea lanes, including attacks on Indian ships during the US-Iran conflict and the abduction of Indian seafarers by pirates.
Modi said BRICS members and partner countries together account for around half the world’s population, 40 percent of global GDP and more than a quarter of global trade.
Over the past two decades, the combined GDP of BRICS economies had grown around four-and-a-half times, against a roughly two-and-a-half-fold expansion in global GDP, he said.
At a time of rising trade barriers, India was building “economic bridges”, Modi said, adding that the country had entered into free-trade agreements with nearly 40 countries since 2014.
“Our approach within BRICS is the same: to reduce barriers and expand opportunities for businesses,” he said.
Modi said India had diversified its supply chains across sectors ranging from energy to technology, making them more reliable. This resilience, he added, enabled the country to offer growth and stability despite global uncertainty.
Pitching India as a manufacturing and innovation destination, Modi pointed to the expansion of roads, railways, ports and airports, alongside the development of capabilities in shipbuilding, semiconductors, quantum technology, critical minerals and biotechnology.
“Make in India, Innovate with India, and Scale for the World,” he said.
The Prime Minister said India’s more than 200,000 startups and over 120 unicorns were developing solutions across education, health care, clean energy, defence and space. BRICS, he said, should help these businesses take their innovations to global markets.
“Our startups are transforming education and health care through AI, working on Green Hydrogen and batteries, and breaking new ground in the defence and space sectors. Now, we must take these world-class innovations to global markets through BRICS as well,” he said.
Initiatives under India’s BRICS chairship include the BRICS incubator network, BRICS MSME portal and BRICS Startup Innovation Fund, alongside cooperation networks in agriculture, health care, skills and smart grids.
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Modi also invited BRICS innovators to draw on India’s digital public infrastructure to develop solutions for their own markets.
He said 50 percent of the world’s real-time payments were made through the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), highlighting its deployment at population scale.
“We have provided an open ecosystem to the industry and startups to develop new solutions on this digital layer,” he said. “Innovators from BRICS nations can also leverage this experience to create new solutions for their own countries.”
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