 "BRICS should agree for free trade area: Chinese media")
Ahead of this week's BRICS summit in Goa, Chinese official media on Thursday called on member countries to agree on Beijing's proposal to make the bloc a free trade area and initiate measures to liberalise trade.
"Observers have focused their eyes on New Delhi and have one question in mind: How much courage will it take for the trade ministers from BRICS countries gathering there on Thursday for the summit meeting to promote greater cooperation?" an article in the state-run Global Times said.
"It seems China is willing to open up its domestic markets to the other four member countries, but they haven't yet made quite the same commitment," it said.
China recently mooted the idea of setting up a free trade area among Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa (BRICS) countries, it said quoting a recent Chinese Ministry of Commerce statement.
The Ministry said a free trade area would be "a significant form of cooperation."
Beijing has shown sincerity in removing tariff and non-tariff barriers to goods produced in other BRICS countries - the question remaining is whether those nations will match the goodwill of China, the article said.
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While media reports said BRICS trade ministers will sign an agreement for better economic cooperation with an eye to promoting trade facilitation and reducing non-tariff barriers some BRICS members are not in a hurry to consider a free trade area, it said.
"These countries may be overly cautious about trade liberalisation and multinational firms will be the victims of such conservative ideas," it said.
"China is speeding up its effort to foster a high-standard global free trade network and has signed 14 free trade agreements with countries and regions including Australia and South Korea. Hopefully, the other BRICS countries will not fall too far behind in terms of sharing the fast-growing domestic market in the world's second-largest economy," it said.
Total retail sales of consumer goods in China rose by 10.6 per cent year-on-year in August, underlining the rapid expansion of China's domestic consumer market, it said, adding that China's electric vehicle market is "so hot that India's biggest SUV maker (Mahindra and Mahindra) is angling for a piece of the action to exploit the world's biggest auto market," it said.
BRICS countries account for 40 per cent of the world's population.
Closer market integration among the nations will definitely help tap the potential for all BRICS members to grow their economies, it said.