The BRICS New Development Bank will issue bonds in South Africa and commercial paper in US dollars in the first half of 2019, the bank's President K.V. Kamath said on Wednesday ."Most of the work is done and it's basically finalizing the launch," Kamath told Xinhua news agency. According to him, the new bonds in South Africa will be denominated in the local currency and will be placed at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The bank had approved 30 projects with combined contract value amounting to $8 billion by the end of 2018 and will approve another 20 to 25 projects involving loans of between $7.5-8 billion this year, Kamath said. "By the end of 2021, we will do about 100 projects and the total loan amount could be $35-40 billion," he said.

The bank has approved nine projects in China, with loans totalling $2.8 billion so far. It expects to approve another eight to 10 projects in the country this year, with loans likely to top $2 billion. The BRICS New Development Bank successfully placed 3 billion RMB-denominated bonds (about $448 million) in the China Interbank Bond Market last week. The bonds were more than 3 times oversubscribed with more than 20 orders from financial institutions from both China and abroad.

Positioning South Africa as a destination for investment is expected to be the agenda of the newly-appointed BRICS Business Council, South African Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies has said, “We had discussions at which we all agreed that the BRICS relationship is an important, strategic relationship for South Africa. It is the most significant grouping of the emerging economies in the world. It has the business council which has done invaluable work, in particularly in our estimation, in the promotion of practical business to business relations. “When we look at the relationship within BRICS, the most important relationship we want to build as government is the investment relationship given that BRICS companies are looking into directing investment into South Africa and, of course, South African companies are also invested into those countries. “We indicated to them that, as government, we want to have a strong ongoing conversation and coordination with the members of the BRICS Business Council as they identify practical business opportunities. As they make recommendations, we want to make sure that there is a strong Team South Africa message that is finding its way through,” he said.

The BRICS Business Council has five members with extensive business experience — Busi Mabuza from the Industrial Development Corporation will chair it; Ayanda Ntsaluba from Discovery Ltd; Bridgette Radebe from Mmakau Mining; Stavros Nicolaou from Aspen Pharmacare, and Elias Monage from Afrika Group.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov will fly to Brazil next week for a sherpa meeting of the BRICS emerging economies, the Russian embassy told Sputnik on Wednesday. "The meeting of sherpas and sous-sherpas of BRICS countries will be held in the city of Curitiba on March 14-15. On March 11, Sergey [Ryabkov] will hold bilateral consultations in Brasilia, including a planned meeting with Brazil's deputy foreign minister," an embassy spokesperson said. The ministers will discuss a wide range of issues, the spokesperson added. There is no information yet on whether they will talk about the crisis unfolding in Brazil's neighbor Venezuela.

Brazil’s firebrand foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo, said his country will put pressure on China, Russia and other emerging-market nations to back Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó. Mr. Araújo said Brazil’s new right-wing administration would appeal to fellow members of the Brics bloc, including India and South Africa, at a meeting of the group next week in the Latin American country.

According to OMR analysis, the BRICS e-commerce logistics market is expected to grow significantly during the forecast period (2018-2023) due to cohesive government policies and a growing e-commerce market. The market has been positively influenced by rising new entrants, inexpensive workforce, increasing smartphone and internet penetration and emerging cross-border e-commerce market. The huge customer base is creating demand for BRICS e-commerce logistics Market coupled with rising online shopping and cohesive government policies. The internet and smartphone penetration in the BRICS region has been boosting the e-commerce logistics market due to rising e-commerce sales and online transactions.

Furthermore, the BRICS e-commerce logistics market is segmented on the basis of product, service, and location. The report provides detailed & insightful chapters which include market overview, key findings, strategic recommendations, market estimations, market determinants, key company analysis, market insights, company profiling, market segmentation, geographical analysis, analyst insights and predictive analysis of the market.

Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies has appointed new members to the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Business Council following nominations from Business Unity South Africa and the Black Business Council. The team has extensive business experience: Busi Mabuza is chairperson of the Industrial Development Corporation; Dr Ayanda Ntsaluba is group executive director of Discovery; Bridgette Radebe is chairperson and chief executive of Mmakau Mining; Dr Stavros Nicolaou is Aspen Pharmacare executive director responsible for strategic trade development and Elias Monage is chief executive of the Afika Group.

Mabuza is the global chairperson of the BRICS Business Council, a position that will shift to Brazil at the BRICS Business Council Midterm meeting in April in Johannesburg. Mabuza said the new team had “been on the ground” for a month already and would meet the other business councils face-to-face for the first time in April. Davies said trade and investment opportunities would be sought in a number of key sectors of the economy: agribusiness, deregulation, digital economy, financial services, energy and green economy, infrastructure, manufacturing, regional aviation and skills development. He said it was important that the SA BRICS Business Council remained located within the ambit of organised business in South Africa, and was appropriately representative and accessible to all business. Mabuza said the council would support small and medium enterprise participation. She said it was also important that the council foster alignment between the government and business in relation to the commercial opportunities offered by the BRICS relationship. Mabuza said they would ensure the interests of organised and sectoral business entities were properly articulated in the nine industry sectoral working groups that spanned the business councils of the five BRICS countries.