Prime Minister Narendra Modi has left for South Africa to attend the 15th BRICS Summit being held in Johannesburg under the South African Chairmanship. The Ministry of External Affairs said the Indian Prime Minister left Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi, at around 7 am on Tuesday and is likely to land at Johannesburg around 5.15 pm IST.
It will be the first in-person summit of BRICS comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, since 2019.
In a statement before his departure, Modi said the BRICS summit will provide a useful opportunity for its members to identify future areas of cooperation and review institutional development. "We value that BRICS has become a platform for discussing and deliberating on issues of concern for the entire Global South, including development imperatives and reform of the multilateral system," he said.
"This summit will provide a useful opportunity for BRICS to identify future areas of cooperation and review institutional development," he said.
Modi will also participate in the 'BRICS Africa Outreach' and 'BRICS Plus Dialogue' events that will be held as part of the summit activities.
The Prime Minister will also have bilateral meetings with leaders of other guest countries. However, it is yet unclear whether Modi will hold a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping who is also attending the summit in South Africa. News reports quoting the Chinese ambassador to South Africa, Chen Xiaodong, suggested that a meeting was on the cards. The Ministry of External Affairs, however, did not confirm the meeting. At a special briefing, the foreign secretary said that the bilateral meetings for Modi were still being finalised.
Modi will leave South Africa on Thursday and arrive in Athens, Greece, on Friday at the invitation of his Greece counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis, his first visit to the country. "I have the honour to be the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Greece after 40 years," he said.
"Contacts between our two civilizations stretch back over two millennia and, in modern times, our ties have been strengthened by shared values of democracy, rule of law and pluralism," Modi said on his Greece visit.
"Cooperation in diverse sectors such as trade and investment, defence, and cultural and people-to-people contacts have been bringing our two countries closer," he added.