Business leaders from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (Brics) have converged in Johannesburg for their first formal face-to-face meeting, following the establishment of the Brics Business Council at the fifth summit of the emerging-market bloc in Durban earlier this year.

The five-a-side meeting will seek to enhance and influence the agenda of the sixth government-to-government Brics Summit, which will be hosted by Brazil in early 2014.

The chairperson of the South African component of the council, Patrice Motsepe, will also chair the inaugural Brics Business Council – the four other members of the South African component include Business Unity South Africa CEO Nomaxabiso Majokweni, Zungu Investment Company executive chairman Sandile Zungu, Sekunjalo Investments CEO Dr Iqbal Surve and Transnet CEO Brian Molefe.

Motsepe says the gathering, which will be addressed by President Jacob Zuma, will follow up the issues raised in Durban, including how business in the five countries can support the creation of a Brics-led development bank. It will also deliberate on ways to improve the quality of the trade and investment relations within the bloc, which are still characterised as much by competition as by cooperation.

South Africa is particularly keen to galvanise support for an envisaged overhaul of prevailing trade and investment ties between Brics countries and Africa. Relations are currently premised on African countries exporting primary products to the rest of the Brics, especially China, and importing finished products in return. Likewise, investments by Brics firms are generally directed towards natural resources, or the infrastructure required for the export of those resources.

South Africa’s Trade and Industry Minister, Dr Rob Davies, describes the current pattern as unsustainable, arguing that it needs to be replaced by a more balanced and symbiotic relationship.

From South Africa's perspective, that would entail greater value addition to African minerals and agricultural products ahead of export, backed by co-investment by Brics companies into the productive assets and the infrastructure required to facilitate such diversification.

Davies says the five governments have committed to promoting trade in value-added products and improving investment relations and that he is looking forward to interacting with the business leaders on how this objective could be achieved. In parallel, the Brics Trade Ministers, though the Contact Group on Economic and Trade Issues, are studying how to promote trade in value-added products and officials are due to meet on the issue again in November.

South Africa also remained a strong backer of the development bank proposal, which the Brics Finance Ministers have indicated could be feasible.

These Finance Ministers, together with the central bank governors, are pursuing a ‘work programme’ to interrogate the bank’s mandate and scope of operations, its capitalisation and the sources of funding, as well as where the new bank would be located and when it would become operational.

An update is expected when the Brics leaders meet in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in early September, on the sidelines of the 2013 G20 Summit and it has been reported that the intention is to finalise preparations for the bank in time for the 2014 Brics Summit.

Davies says that, while the bank will focus primarily on infrastructure in Brics counties, there is potential for it to help close some of the funding gaps that surround a range of African infrastructure projects.

Motsepe adds that the business council will be interrogating a number of “tangible projects”, including those that make up the African Union's so-called North-South Corridor projects, which comprise some large-scale transport, energy and water developments.