Commerce Secretary Sunil Barthwal, who attended the 14th BRICS Trade Ministers’ Meeting under the BRICS Presidency of Russian Federation, emphasised on the need for cooperation and collective efforts for outcome-oriented support for the MSME sector.

“As micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are an integral part of the BRICS countries, there is a need for cooperation and collective efforts for outcome-oriented support for the sector, which form the backbone of the overall industrial ecosystem and economic growth,” said Barthwal.

The Commerce Secretary expressed the need for strengthening the multilateral trading system with WTO at its core, effective functioning of Joint Value Chains, expanding interaction among MSMEs, India’s successful story on Digitalization and e-commerce and the relevance of cooperation among Special Economic Zones.

He mentioned the importance of MSME related developments and their integration with the Global Value Chains.

While reiterating the Jaipur call for action for enhancing access to information for MSMEs issued during India’s Presidency in 2023, he lauded the Russian Presidency for carrying forward the initiative by making efforts to compile certain basic information pertaining to MSMEs among the BRICS members.

As MSMEs are an integral part of the BRICS Members, the Commerce Secretary stressed on the importance of cooperation and collective efforts for outcome oriented support for MSMEs.

He expressed the need to focus on key areas like, exploring cooperation in the form of Research and Development, Technology transfers and joint Ventures as well as the Business development opportunities.

On strengthening multilateralism, he reiterated the collective efforts to find a solution for long pending mandated issues of WTO, in particular, the development aspect and the Special and Differential treatment.

He stressed on the urgent need for resolving the issues including the permanent solution to Public Stock Holding, constitution of two-tier Dispute Settlement system, WTO Reform to be based on the principles and objectives of WTO, leading to more responsive to development requirements of emerging economies, invigorating the WTO through “30 for 30” bringing in alt least 30 operational improvements to the WTO before the organization completes 30 years in 2025.

The Secretary also stressed upon strengthening the resiliency of supply chain through decentralization and diversification, furthering co-operation in value chains through G20 generic Mapping framework for GVCs and by enunciating guiding principles for collaboration.

In this context, as an initial step towards digitalization, he stressed on paperless trade including digitalization of documents like the Bill of lading.

He further underscored the urgency of accelerating inclusive digital transformation.

While referring to India’s success story of building up an open source India Stack of Critical Digital Public infrastructure as part of its digital industrialization following the core principles of open access, transparency, trust and respect for data protection and privacy, expressed India’s willingness to share its experience with the BRICS countries on the e-revolution in the domains of payments, e-commerce, national identity, banking, education, etc.