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Jeddah - Yasmine El Tohamy - MOSCOW: BRICS countries on Friday launched a tourism cooperation roadmap during the intergovernmental organization’s first tourism forum held in Moscow, with top officials calling it a “great achievement” toward easing travel formalities and boosting cooperation among the hospitality sectors of the grouping of emerging-market nations. 

The BRICS group — the acronym stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — was formed in 2009 as an investment forum and has since evolved into a geopolitical bloc. In January, the group expanded its membership to include Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and Egypt.

The group’s leaders meet for annual summits hosted by the members holding its rotating presidency. This year’s chairmanship was taken by Russia, which for the first time in the bloc’s history held a forum dedicated to tourism.

Over 300 representatives of the industry gathered in Moscow on Friday for the BRICS Tourism Forum, where delegates of the nine member countries announced a roadmap on joint policy and investment initiatives.

“We can say that the BRICS tourism track has been formally launched as of this moment,” Russian Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov told reporters.

“The document will bolster cooperation in the tourism industry’s digitalization and in promoting and increasing tourist exchanges.”

It included developing digital tourism solutions, a BRICS green initiative for tourism, and business relations in the sector, which Reshetnikov said contributes about five percent to the group’s member economies.

The roadmap was welcomed by the Indian Ministry of Tourism.

“This is a great achievement, first of its kind, and now the countries will work together in a certain manner or through the roadmap,” Niraj Sharan, assistant director general at the ministry, told Arab News on the sidelines of the forum.

“In the future, more and more tourists will move within BRICS nations. It will be easy to go around, easing travel formalities, each country will facilitate member countries’ citizens, there will be cooperation among the hospitality sectors, and the countries will be investing in each other’s firms.”

India is already offering e-visas to most of the BRICS nations.

“India is aiming at a better partnership, coordination and cohesion among all the BRICS nations, better facilities, easy movement of tourists, better exchanges for tourism sectors, tourism stakeholders, enhancing investment in each other’s countries,” Sharan said.

BRICS nations have a combined population of about 45 percent of the world’s inhabitants and account for some 25 percent of the global economy.

Since last year, 40 countries, including Malaysia, Thailand and Pakistan, have expressed interest in becoming members of the bloc, which tries to represent the Global South and provide an alternative model to the Western-dominated G7 — the most advanced economies comprising Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Japan, Canada and the US.

Egypt, a new member of the bloc, said the roadmap was an opportunity to benefit from linkages with some of the world’s most populous countries.

“The BRICS Tourism Forum is significant, it’s opening up to new territories ... It’s a golden opportunity, where you all have to work on the development and improvement, and work between the nations within the BRICS to increase intra-tourism,” said Amr El-Kadi, chairman of the Egyptian Tourism Promotion Authority at the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

“We are having another big-scale program to promote Egypt in India. We are working hard with the Indian embassy in Cairo to do a lot. We have a joint working team between both countries to know exactly how and where and where to promote tourism both ways. So, we have very ambitious plans for us.”