BRASILIA (AFP) – Signs that the global crisis is easing should not stall plans to overhaul the world's financial system, including reform of the IMF, the foreign ministers of Brazil, India and South Africa said on Tuesday.
"The risk is that, with the crisis subsiding, some reforms will not be carried out deeply enough," Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told a news conference after talks in Brasilia with his counterparts.
Amorim, India's S.M. Krishna and South Africa's Maite Nkoana-Mashabane held the meeting to prepare a summit between their countries in Brazil's capital that is scheduled for October 8.
They issued a joint statement calling for a continued expansion of the International Monetary Fund's reserves and a shake-up of countries' representation and voting rights on that and other Bretton Woods institutions.
They also backed negotiations aimed at sealing a free trade agreement between India, the South American trade bloc Mercosur, and the Southern Africa Customs Union.
The ministers said they wanted to see trade between their nations top 25 billion dollars by 2015, up from 10 billion dollars currently.
