St. Petersburg summarised the results of the 5th International Municipal Forum BRICS+, which was attended by 7 thousand delegates, including 2 thousand foreign delegates from 200 cities of the world.

Sergey Cheremin, Head of the Department for External Economic and International Relations of Moscow, in an exclusive commentary for TV BRICS spoke about his department’s plans to develop relations with Chinese and Indian partners.

“First of all, we are talking about Beijing, about the city of Chengdu. We plan to develop relations with Henan Province, its capital Zhengzhou. We have very good, long-term relations with Shanghai. The Moscow City Government is actively involved in negotiations at the regional level with other countries, for example, with India. We have prepared a programme of cooperation with the state of Maharashtra and, of course, we are interested in interaction with the business capital of India, Mumbai. We are actively engaged in dialogue with Bengaluru, the high-tech capital of India”

Sergey Cheremin Head of the Department for External Economic and International Relations of Moscow

Cheremin also informed about the intentions of the Department for External Economic and International Relations of Moscow to sign cooperation programmes with a state like Andhra Pradesh.

“In general, Moscow’s partnership with BRICS megacities is very active. We have been interacting with the city of Rio de Janeiro for a long time. We held talks with representatives of South Africa at the forum to establish relations with Johannesburg and a number of other cities in South Africa. I believe that forums in the BRICS+ format are very useful for the development of such inter-regional ties,” the Minister said.

He also emphasised the special status of city-to-city diplomacy as a very important component of common diplomacy.

“Co-operation between cities allows us to preserve horizontal ties not only between municipalities, but also between our business communities. Moscow actively adheres to this philosophy and tries to still preserve relations with all partners, including those in Europe, Latin America, Africa, and build new relations in Asia,” Cheremin said.

The Minister of the Moscow City Government took part in the sessions of the forum “BRICS Dialogue: Russia – India in the Changing Global World”, “Prospects for the Development of International Cooperation of Representative Bodies at the Metropolitan, Regional and Municipal Levels in the Contours of BRICS+”, “Educational Projects as an Advanced Exhibitor of Entering International Markets”.

As a reminder, on the margins of the 5th BRICS+ International Municipal Forum, a cooperation agreement was signed between the TV BRICS media network and the Moscow Centre for International Cooperation (MCIC).

The parties agreed to work together to promote Moscow’s investment and tourist attractiveness in the BRICS+ media space, and to implement projects that promote trade, economic, scientific, technical and cultural cooperation between Moscow and the cities of the BRICS+ countries.

Photo: mos.ru