Brasilia: The coming together of countries from across three continents at the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) summit illustrates the global village that people live together today, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told the joint meeting that the leaders had with the CEOs from the three countries on Wednesday.

There were still problems of connectivity, and trade and tourism among the three remained ``much below potential.'' While trade and tourism were constrained by connectivity, for connectivity to be established, there was a requirement of a minimum demand base. India was willing to take bold decisions to improve connectivity with ``our faith in the future of IBSA'' as the basis.

On the rationale of the summit itself, he said: ``The success of our experiment to pursue development within the framework of an open economy and an open society is vital to the well-being and empowerment of millions of people in Asia, Africa and Latin America.''

Dr. Singh said he was heartened by the cooperation that had developed in the IBSA framework over the last three years. IBSA needed to be more than a project of the three governments, and he was pleased at the success of the interaction among the business communities from the three countries.

Among the areas where the advantages of cooperation were evident would be energy security. With Brazil being the world leader in the use of ethanol, South Africa having developed coal gasification technology and a synthetic fuel industry and with India's expertise on wind and solar energy, IBSA can be effective in utilising these strengths.

Trade within IBSA had increased in the last three years and it needed to be raised to the level of $10 billion. India was discussing a possible trade arrangement with the South American group MERCOSUR and the Southern African Customs Union that would create a ``large and expanding economic space.''

In addition, there were plans to institute arrangements to address issues for the facilitation of investments and of trade in good, services. As a start, an IBSA mechanism would be established for exchange of information and experiences on regulatory issues and also look at harmonising standards.

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