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BRICS countries are ready to challenge unipolar business environment

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BRICS countries occupy as much as 26% of our planet’s territory, 43% of the world’s population lives in those countries, and their combined GDP currently equals 18,5% of the global GDP. It is quite obvious that there are prerequisites for the future growth of the GDP index, and the World Bank analysts share the same opinion. They also claim that by 2025 size of the BRICS countries’ economies will have reached 50% of the G6 countries ratio and by 2040 will have surpassed it.

A special attention should be placed at developing partnering relationships between Russian Federation and the Republic of South Africa, as they are the least developed in comparison to double-way connections between the other union members. The upcoming sectors, which could be the potential drivers of future growth, are mineral resources industry as well as oil and energy sectors. In order to start negotiating our future cooperation in those areas, a group of scientists from Saint-Petersburg Mining University arrived at Johannesburg just before the summit’s beginning.

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As Anatoly Suslov, Principal of the Mining University says «Our negotiations were specifically focused on the way we can facilitate using more viable and ecologically-friendly technologies when working with different sources of raw materials in the setting of Sub-Saharan Africa. At this moment South Africa is in need of new innovative technologies that will result in a higher efficiency as applied to minerals extraction and their further processing. The aforementioned are the reasons for our future win-win cooperation».

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Mangan, platinum-group metals, gold, chromites, vanadium, zirconium as well as other minerals are extracted in South Africa. Coal extraction is also quite common, as 80% of total power balance in the country is generated through coal combustion. Unsurprisingly, one of the priorities in the mineral resources sector of South Africa is to increase usage of other energy sources.

Ilya Beloglazov, Senior Lecturer of the Department of Automation of Production and Technological Processes at the Mining University, adds «Instead of firing coal at power plants it would be more reasonable to implement new and sophisticated advanced processing technologies and thus make gas, while also lowering the negative impact on the environment. Besides, by adhering to the same procedure, it is also possible to produce out of coal synthetic fuels, methanol, ammonia as well as other chemicals».

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As an outcome of negotiations, the Sweet Earth company expressed further interest in producing ammonia with the use of gasification technology, and the superiors of the Sekoko Coal enterprise invited Russian specialists to visit mining allotment at the Limpopo province. The visitors inspected suspended exploration wells and took samples from multiple layers in order to conduct laboratory research. Those samples are required for determining qualitative indicators of the local coals and rationale for their advanced processing.

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