BRICS Regional Aviation Partnership

•  The Union Cabinet has approved the signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) amongst BRICS Nations on the Regional Aviation Partnership Cooperation viz. Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
• The objective is that BRICS countries would benefit from the establishing of an institutional framework to cooperate in the field of civil aviation.

Among the areas of cooperation, following areas have been identified:

• Public Policies and best practices in regional services.
• Regional Airports.
• Airport infrastructure management and air navigation services.
• Technical cooperation between regulatory agencies.
• Environment Sustainability; including deliberation of global initiatives.
• Qualification and Training.
• Other fields as mutually determined.

About BRICS

• The acronym BRIC was first used in 2001 by Goldman Sachs in their Global Economics Paper, "The World Needs Better Economic BRICs" on the basis of econometric analyses projecting that the economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China would individually and collectively occupy far greater economic space and would be amongst the world’s largest economies in the next 50 years or so.
• As a formal grouping, BRIC started after the meeting of the Leaders of Russia, India and China in St. Petersburg on the margins of G8 Outreach Summit in 2006. The grouping was formalized during the 1st meeting of BRIC Foreign Ministers on the margins of UNGA in New York in 2006. The 1st BRIC Summit was held in Yekaterinburg, Russia, on 16 June 2009.
• It was agreed to expand BRIC into BRICS with the inclusion of South Africa at the BRIC Foreign Ministers’ meeting in New York in September 2010. Accordingly, South Africa attended the 3rd BRICS Summit in Sanya, China on 14 April 2011.

By: Vishal