Russian president Vladimir Putin has asked the BRICS nations to take a stand against "restrictive practices" of multinational companies.
Putin's call, which has undertones of an anti-West move, may pose a challenge to both India and China where companies are engaged in day-to-day dealings with MNCs.
"Russia's initiative on the development of cooperation among the BRICS countries' antimonopoly agencies is aimed at creating effective mechanisms to encourage healthy competition," Putin said in an article published in People's Daily Online ahead of the BRICS summit in the Chinese coastal city of Xiamen on Sunday.
"The goal is to create a package of cooperation measures to work against the restrictive business practices of large multinational corporations and trans-border violations of competition rules," he said.
Putin's remarks have been prompted by sanctions imposed by some western countries on Russia making it difficult for major domestic companies to operate worldwide as effectively as earlier, observers said. But both India and China would be put in an uncomfortable position if Russia tries to seriously push through a resolution on the issue at the BRICS summit.
Indian IT companies depend heavily on contracts from these MNCs. A large number of MNCs now happen to be either Chinese owned or invested in by Chinese companies underscoring the close relationship that has developed between them. Besides, Beijing has been encouraging Chinese companies to buy out western companies in its quest for markets and new technology.
Putin also wants the BRICS to come up with its own standards on cyber security, which may differ from western practices followed by Indian companies.
"Russia also calls for promoting the interaction of the BRICS countries in the area of global information security. We propose joining our efforts to create a legal basis for cooperation and subsequently to draft and adopt universal rules of responsible behaviour of states in this sphere," the Russian president wrote. "A major step towards this goal would be the signing of an intergovernmental BRICS agreement on international information security".
Putin also called for cooperation among the five BRICS nations on the growth of small and medium scale enterprises. ""We believe that we should integrate the national SMEs' online resources for placing crosslinks and other commercial information and for exchanging data on reliable partners," he said.