Fellow Leaders,
Excellencies,
Members of the diplomatic community,
Business leaders,
Esteemed Chairpersons and Members of the BRICS Business Council, 
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Let me begin by congratulating the Chairpersons and members of the BRICS Business Council and the Working Groups on the sustained work they undertake throughout the year. 

That work is essential to turning the ambitions of BRICS into meaningful economic cooperation. 

Our shared task is to translate the ideas, recommendations and partnerships developed through the Council into tangible economic growth and development.

The BRICS Business Council was established during South Africa’s first BRICS Presidency in 2013 in recognition that economic cooperation cannot be the responsibility of governments alone. 

Instead, we need a compact: governments create the enabling conditions for trade and investment, and business seeks out the opportunities for production and commerce.

Our economies have confronted profound challenges over the intervening years, yet we have also shown that adversity can create opportunity. 

Resilience is not simply the capacity to withstand disruption. It is the capacity to transform disruption into new capabilities and partnerships.

The question is no longer whether there is potential within BRICS, but whether we have the ambition, the instruments and the partnerships to convert this potential into economic value for our people. 

The Council must serve not simply as a forum for consultation, but as a mechanism for developing commercial relationships and productive partnerships.

As BRICS, we find ourselves at an inflection point.

As the global economy is reshaped, as trade patterns shift, as technological advances accelerate and climate pressures increase, countries and companies are compelled to reconsider where they source, produce and invest. 

For us, this is an opportunity to shape a more resilient, diversified and inclusive economic future for the Global South.

For too long, developing economies have participated in global value chains mainly as suppliers of raw commodities.

Value creation, technology and higher-value manufacturing remained concentrated elsewhere. 

We should not reproduce that pattern within the expanded BRICS. 

Our ambition must extend beyond increasing intra-BRICS trade to deepening the productive relationships between our economies. 

We cannot accept a future where Africa supplies the minerals on which the next generation of industries depends, while value addition and manufacturing take place elsewhere.

If we are to change where value is created, we must also change where investment is directed.

We must direct investment towards manufacturing and beneficiation, industrial technologies, energy systems, infrastructure and logistics. 

Companies must invest not only to access markets but to establish production facilities and develop local capabilities.

As governments and business communities, let us make BRICS a platform through which investment and trade reshape existing economic patterns and thereby transform the destinies of our countries and peoples.

I thank you.