BRICS news updates .... October 15

From VancouverObserver:
In a world history moment, China has just pushed off the United States as the world's top economy, according to new data from the International Monetary Fund.
The measurement, known as Purchasing Power Parity, shows that Chinese consumers are able to buy more shoes, Starbucks and cars than Americans can with their money - a clear sign of China's rising wealth and superpower status.
"It's been expected for a long time," said Yuen Pau Woo, Distinguished East Asia Fellow, Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada in Vancouver.
“If we haven’t already understood how important China is to Canada, I sure hope this statistic wakes us up, and prompts an even more focused reorientation of our political, economic and diplomatic energies to a building of durable relations with China.”

“China is not an option for the Canadian economy, it is an imperative."..........

From WorldBulletin:
India and China have agreed to pull back troops ranged against each other on a remote Himalayan plateau, the Indian government said on Friday, ending their biggest face-off on the disputed border in a year.
The two armies mobilised about 1,000 soldiers each in Ladakh this month, accusing the other of building military infrastructure in violation of an agreement to maintain peace until a resolution of the 52-year territorial row.
Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj said she met her Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, in New York on Thursday and the two agreed to withdraw their soldiers to their original positions by the end of the month.
"The bad phase is over," state-run All India Radio quoted her as telling reporters in New York.........

From BRICSpost:
Russia and China have signed several multi-billion dollar deals on Monday, including nuclear energy, finance, tourism, high-speed railways, apart from the agreement on gas deliveries to China via the eastern route.
Chinese and Russian Premiers Dmitry Medvedev and Li Keqiang have held the 19th Regular Meeting of the Heads of Government in Moscow during which 40 inter-governmental agreements were signed.
The two allies have also signed a massive currency swap deal worth $24.4 billion. The agreement was inked between the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) and the Russian Central Bank on Monday “to facilitate bilateral trade and investment”.
The agreement lasts for three years and can be extended if both sides agree, the PBOC said on Monday in a statement on its website.
Beijing is keen on substituting the US dollar with the yuan in all of China’s trade with other countries. The Chinese currency now trades directly with the Japanese yen, the Australian dollar, the Brazilian real, the EU’s euro, the New Zealand dollar and many other currencies.......

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a long speech to a 20K strong American Indians (most of whom I bet are dual passport or dual citizenship holders given the way they were jumping around and applauding every other minute) at Madison Square Garden. Below is vid of what John Stewart the comedian thought of that event.


China is on a roll.  The sanctions on Russia are a God-send for China.
From BRICSpost:
China, Italy sign deals worth $10 bn  
Chinese and Italian companies signed deals worth 8 billion euros (more than $10 billion) in Rome on Tuesday, a highlight of Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s visit to Italy.
The deals signed after Li met his Italian counterpart, Matteo Renzi, covered investment, engineering and technology and financial cooperation.
Renzi described the deals as “antipasto” to more cooperation with Beijing in the future.
Italy’s defence firm Finmeccanica said it will supply China with 50 helicopters for a 400 million euro deal.....

From Xinhuanet:
China and Russia have signed   a memorandum to jointly build a high-tech park in each country as the two look to further innovation in science and technology, authorities said on Tuesday.
The park in China will be located in the new town of Xixian Fendong in Shaanxi and will initially occupy four square kilometers. In Russia, 200,000 square meters of buildings will be built in the Skolkovo Innovation Center in Moscow, the Russian Direct Investment Fund said in a press release Tuesday.
Part of China's revival of the "Silk Road", the high-tech parks are being developed by the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Russia-China Investment Fund (RCIF), the Skolkovo Fund, and the local government of northwest China's Shaanxi Province.......

From Forbes:
In Brazil Elections,  President Dilma Has A Better Country On Her Side

From SINA:
China and Russia on Monday inked a host of cooperation deals ranging from finance and investment to energy and high-speed railways.
Visiting Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, witnessed the signing of the about 40 agreements after holding the 19th China-Russia Prime Ministers' Regular Meeting.
The documents, including governmental accords and business contracts, also cover trade, people-to-people exchanges, advanced technology, satellite navigation, currency swap and customs..........

And, the data that can no longer be hidden no matter how hard the Western powers-that-be try to:
From ITAR:
A new G7 emerges, the Financial Times said on Wednesday  
The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday released its latest World Economic Outlook. A striking new finding emerges: the seven largest emerging markets are now bigger, in gross domestic product terms, than the long established G7 group of industrialized nations, when measured at purchasing power parity (PPP), the British daily said.
A hypothetical new G7, comprising the BRICs Brazil, Russia, India and China and three of the so-called MINT economies Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey - has a combined GDP of $37.8 tn (at purchasing power parity) compared to $34,5 tn for the old G7 Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US.
The new attempts to measure GDP also confirm that, in PPP terms, China is now the world's largest economy, overtaking the US (as revealed by the FT in April). At market exchange rates, the US economy is worth $17, 4 tn and the Chinese $10.4 tn. With an adjustment for relative prices, China’s economy moves up to first place, with a GDP of $17.6 tn.
Russia is the sixth among the new top 10, ahead of France and the UK.
“The new estimates point to a dramatically changed world: half of the twenty largest economies are now emerging markets and half are from the established rich world,” the Financial Times said.

Brazil keeps on adding more jobs but Reuters seem to think the numbers are low. Has Reuters seen the USA's numbers lately even the massaged and manufactured numbers are dismal compared to the Brazilian ones.
Brazil adds 123,785 net payroll jobs in September -Labor Ministry
Brazil's economy added a smaller-than-expected 123,785 net payroll jobs in September, the lowest for the month since 2001, the Labor Ministry said on Wednesday.
Brazil added 101,425 jobs in August.
Latin America's largest economy was expected to have added 140,000 payroll jobs in September, according to the median forecast of seven economists......

From Business IAfrica:
President Jacob Zuma will release the results    of work done to explore the potential of the country’s ocean economy at the first Operation Phakisa open day in Durban on Wednesday. 
"Operation Phakisa is designed to answer that fundamental question, how do we turn our good plans into action to improve the lives of our people and to make the National Development Plan come alive," President Zuma said.
Four priority sectors have been selected as new growth areas in the ocean economy, which include aquaculture and offshore oil and gas exploration. 
The other priority areas are marine transport and manufacturing and marine protection services and ocean governance. 
"We have constantly lamented that we have good plans but the implementation part is a challenge. We are now focusing intensively on implementation," President Zuma said. 
Operation Phakisa is an adaptation of the Big Fast Results methodology that was successfully applied by the Malaysian Government in the delivery of its Economic and Government Transformation Programmes.....

The more money Indians make, the more they travel.  I think our Bombardier was hoping to win this contract. **sigh**
From BBC:
Indian budget airline IndiGo  has signed an agreement to buy 250 A320neo aircraft from Airbus.
The agreement is thought to be Airbus' single largest order by number of aircraft, the firms said on Wednesday.
The deal is expected to be worth $25.7bn (£16.1bn) at list prices, although airlines typically get a discount, news agency Reuters reports.
IndiGo is India's largest domestic airline by market share and operates 540 flights daily across India.......