An expanded meeting of the BRICS Business Council was held in Moscow on July 6, 2015

An expanded meeting of the BRICS Business Council was held in Moscow on July 6, 2015. The business community`s recommendations to the BRICS leaders were discussed at the parallel sessions held by seven working groups of the Business Council on infrastructure, manufacturing, finance, energy, cooperation in professional trainings, agriculture and deregulation. The results of discussion were presented by the participants at the expanded meeting of the BRICS Business Council where the heads of the national parts of the Council commented on them. The participants emphasized an importance of boosting connectivity between BRICS countries, developing infrastructure through the New Development Bank, aligning technical standards and regulations of the BRICS countries, improving customs regulation and facilitating visas, developing multilateral energy markets, strengthening innovative cooperation and creating new bio-products in the agricultural sphere.

The participants also highlighted the need to consolidate efforts aimed at further BRICS institutionalization, to monitor the business community recommendations` inclusion into the BRICS leaders` decisions and implementation of these decisions by the BRICS member countries.

The reports on BRICS members’ compliance with the summits` decisions are prepared on a regular basis by the BRICS Research Group starting from 2011. The BRICS Fortaleza compliance report was released on the eve of the BRICS Ufa summit. The methodology, scoring system and actions considered as compliance are described in more detail in the full English version of the report and an expanded press release in Russian.