BRICS News

Meng is also Deputy Chairwoman of the Board at Huawei [Huawei]
The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Thursday said that it had taken “coercive measures against two Canadians on suspicion of jeopardizing China’s national security.
The statement came after Canadian writer Michael Spavor was reported to have been detained in Liaoning, near the border with North Korea, which he had visited many times.
China said that Spavor was working for an organization that had not been legally registered in China.

Actual quarterly growth rate was 2.2% versus consensus forecast of 1.6 per cent, while annual growth was 1.1% versus consensus forecast of 0.5 per cent
The National Treasury building in Pretoria [PREUSS]
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data released by Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) exceeded the Reuters consensus forecast of a 1.6 per cent seasonally adjusted annualized (saa) increase in the third quarter on the second quarter by almost a half, as the actual rise was 2.2 per cent.

US President Donald Trump said the G20 Summit was a success for America’s interests [PPIO]
World markets on Sunday may have sighed some relief after news emerged from the G20 Summit in Buenos Aires that China and the US had agreed to put the breaks on any new trade tariffs for the next three months.
The US agreed not to raise current tariffs on some $200 billion in Chinese goods from 10 to 25 per cent on January 1, 2019.

The Russian Navy had just concluded a series of naval drills in the Black Sea [Russian MoD]
Russia says that it has detained in the Black Seathe three Ukrainian naval vesses which illegaly breached its maritime border late Sunday.

Officials on both sides of the Pacific are hoping to tone down trade war rhetoric before the two presidents meet at the G20 Summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina next week
 
China on Thursday fired off a fresh volley of complaints against recent US decisions which alleged that Beijing was implementing unfair trade practices.
Beijing’s Ministry of Commerce targeted its criticism in particular at Section 301 of the 1974 US trade law, which allows US trade representatives to act without World Trade Organization authorization to investigate Chinese trade practices.

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani (left) has told India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the two countries are strategic partners [Image: BRICS2015]
Economic and strategic partners India and Iran are exploring ways to continue their relationship in light of renewed sanctions by the Trump administration earlier this month.
The Indian ambassador to Iran Saurabh Kumar met with the head of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture on Tuesday to keep trade relations strong during the current sanctions period.

Jair Bolsonaro, right, the president-elect meets with outgoing President Michel Temer [Brazil Gov]
Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro has suffered his first defeat since winning the second round of the national elections last month, and reversed course on a number of controversial announcements he made recently.
Fresh off his election win, Bolsonaro had pledged to remove the Ministry of Labor and replace it with a presence in the Ministry of Economy as he prepared to announce the new government, expected by January.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says it is dangerous to abandon the treaty and has called for military experts to discuss agreement [PPIO]
Russian President Vladimir Putin has told local media that he is hoping to resume negotiations on the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty governing land-based short-to-intermediate range nuclear missiles.
Last month, US President Donald Trump announced that he wanted to withdraw from and terminate the INF treaty, blaming Russia for consistet violation of its tenets.

With BRICS espousing multilateralism, a number of African and Asian leaders were invited to Johannesburg [PPIO]
The World Bank Group’s Doing Business report noted that the BRICS economies, Brazil, the Russian Federation, India, China and South Africa, introduced a total of 23 reforms, with getting electricity and trading across borders the most common areas of improvement.

In his maiden Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS), Finance Minister Tito Mboweni started his speech with a quote from Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities”.
The MTBPS is a central part of fiscal planning and is designed to outline how South Africa spends scarce resources for the benefit of all South Africans
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity… we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…”.