After an official photo session, President of Russia Vladimir Putin, President of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa, President of Brazil Michel Temer, President of China Xi Jinping and Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi held a restricted meeting, which was later followed by an expanded session with the members of the delegations.
The BRICS leaders discussed how to improve the association’s operations and how to further develop cooperation in priority areas such as politics, security, trade, the economy, finance, culture and humanitarian ties. The summit agenda also included the coordination of actions on regional matters, including the situation in Syria and the Middle East as a whole, as well as the settlement of issues concerning the Korean Peninsula and Iran’s nuclear programme.
After the meetings, a signing ceremony took place. The BRICS leaders adopted the Johannesburg Declaration of the 10th BRICS Summit. Other documents signed as part of the summit include: Memorandum of Cooperation in Environmental Protection, Memorandum of Understanding on Partnership in Regional Aviation of the BRICS Countries, Memorandum of Understanding on Joint Research in Distributed Ledger and Blockchain Technology in the Context of Developing the Digital Economy.
During the ceremony, Chairman of the BRICS Business Council Iqbal Surve and President of the New Development Bank Kundapur Kamath presented reports on the past year’s work, followed by a video presentation of the Cradle of Civilisation archaeological research centre.
The summit will continue on July 27.