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BRICS countries must reform their financial systems to facilitate integration and trade settlements, Chairperson of the HSBC Bank in India Naina Lal Kidwai has said.
She said capital markets to allow cross-listing of the BRICS allowing companies to cross list in each other's stock market.
"BRICS should also make their currencies more convertible against each other," said Kidwai in an interview with Xinhua on Tuesday on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit taking place in the South Africa port city of Durban.
She said as an example, the currencies of India and China, two members of BRICS which also includes South Africa, Brazil and Russia, are not easily convertible and this will make it hard to facilitate the flow of trade.
On Tuesday, China and Brazil agreed to trade in their own currencies equivalent to a yearly 30 billion U. S. dollars. Of their annual 75 million dollars trade, the two countries starting in June this year will move to an out of the U. S. dollar zone.
The three-year agreement marked the first major step by the two leading developing economies to changes to global trade flows long dominated by the currencies of the United States and Europe.
"Our interest is not to establish new relations with China, but to expand relations to be used in the case of turbulence in financial markets," said Brazilian Central Bank Governor Alexandre Tombini.
According to Kidwai, who is also Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, all BRICS members should make their currencies convertible as this will make trade among them more efficient.
"BRICS has already created an opportunity for businesses to work together. The next step is to create an enabling environment for business operations and financial reforms are necessary," she said.
She said BRICS Business Council will facilitate dialogue among the private sector and therefore the need for early reforms as the potential for business within the BRICS is enormous.
"We may be at a very early stages but business to business dialogue is very important at this stage," said Kidwai.
"The areas of cooperation within the BRICS are huge because all members require infrastructure and energy. Each member also has its own strengths that others can benefit from. For instance, India has been able to produce cheap but high quality medicines and this technology can be adopted by other member countries," she added.
Expectations from the BRICS Summit now underway are high as the multilateral organization is regarded as the tipping point in challenge to the existing global economic order dominated by the West for many decades.
President of the African Development Bank Donald Kaberuka in a statement released Tuesday said BRICS represents a changing world, as gravity and power gradually shift from the North to the South, and from the West to the East.
BRICS boasts nearly half of the world's population and nearly a quarter of its gross domestic product.
