The government has vowed to maintain and strengthen its 30-year economic relations with Russia in spite of that country being at the centre of the war in Ukraine that has brought the world into a cost-of-living crisis.
International Relations and Cooperation Minister Naledi Pandor yesterday hosted her Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, who was on his four-nations tour of Africa.
Pandor said she was pleased the intergovernmental committee on Trade and Economic Co-operation (ICTEC) remained an active platform for co-ordinating bilateral relations.
She said that the ICTEC continued to meet regularly and had made considerable progress in deepening the co-operation between South Africa and the Russian Federation.
“However, it is my view that both our countries can and must do more to develop and capitalise on opportunities to increase our co-operation in the economic sphere,” Pandor said.
“At the multilateral-level, our countries continue to demonstrate the resolve to continuously work together bilaterally and in multilateral fora, such as the United Nations and through the BRICS formation, through a strong alliance of positions on multilateral issues as well as support for the democratisation of the global governance system.
Russia is not a significant trade parter to South Africa.
Its exports to South Africa was $342.22 million (R5.8 billion) during 2021, while Russian imports from South Africa totalled $796.87m during 2021, according to the UN’s COMTRADE database on international trade.
South Africa’s bilateral relations with Russia consist of relations in the political, economic, social, defence and security spheres with a number of bilateral agreements and memorandum of understanding on trade, tourism and agriculture, mining, medicine and education.
Pandor also said the government was excited at the progress that the new Development Bank of BRICS has made since its establishment.
She said they were pleased that South Africa had been the beneficiary of significant bankable projects’ support from the BRICS bank.
South Africa and Russia sit in the BRICS grouping, which is a diplomatic and economic collaboration framework aiming to challenge Western influence in the global economic order.
“The current global geopolitical tensions clearly signalled the need for us to consider creating institutional mechanisms that will have the stature, form and global trust to promote and support global peace and security,” she said.
“We believe that BRICS should play a proactive role in emerging deliberations on the form that these international global mechanisms might take, and we must ensure that BRICS is part of a redesigned global framework. For us, multilateralism lies at the heart of the biggest issues facing the world today.”
In ending her remarks, Pandor committed the government to work towards a peaceful resolution of all conflicts, including the year-long Russia-Ukraine war, saying they would use diplomacy and the search for peace as a route to the resolution of disputes.
“This is why, as South Africa, we consistently articulate that we will always stand ready to support the peaceful resolution of conflicts on the continent and throughout the globe,” Pandor said.
“South Africa believes that the only path to peace is through diplomacy, through dialogue and through a commitment to the principles of the UN,” she said.
The countries have defended their planned naval exercise “Mosi II”, between Russia, China and South Africa in February along the KwaZulu-Natal coast.
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