Prime Minister Narendra Modi will travel to Russia’s Ufa for the Seventh BRICS Summit and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and also pay a visit to five Central Asian countries including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan (July 6 to July 13′ 2015).
The first country PM visits on July 7 is Uzbekistan. This will be followed by Kazakhstan. And then Prime Minister will be going to Ufa for BRICS. The seventh BRICS summit is going to be held from July 8-9. On his way back from BRICS Summit, PM will go to Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in that order.
The SCO Summit, which will be held in Ufa, may see India getting the membership of the six-nation group of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan —a major highlight of the visit. Currently, India is only an observer status. India had formally applied for membership in SCO in Sep 2014. The SCO Summit will discuss counter terrorism, energy cooperation and dealing with drug trafficking besides enhancing economic cooperation.
The theme of this summit is ‘BRICS partnership: A powerful factor for Global Development’. The agenda for this summit covers both political and economic issues but the emphasis is on the economic cooperation.
The PM will attempt to push the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) project, crucial to meet India’s energy needs as it will carry gas from Central Asia but has been hampered because of lack of physical connectivity.
GK Question
- Who heads the BRICS Development Bank? KV Kamath
