Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Pretoria for Ibsa Summit

PRETORIA: The rapidly deteriorating global economic outlook, especially the near-crisis situation in the Eurozone, is likely to top the agenda of fifth summit of India, Brazil and South Africa beginning here on Tuesday. All three countries have been engaged with other global majors in recent weeks to ward off a spillover of the Greek crisis into an economic pandemic.

India will be represented by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. He arrived here on a three-day visit to attend the trilateral Ibsa Summit. He is expected to focus on global issues like the difficult economic scenario and the UN reforms

In his pre-departure statement, Singh signaled that he looked forward to the deliberations, especially on the current global economic outlook.

The IBSA summit comes just weeks ahead of the G-20 deliberations due in France in the first week of November. "We expect to issue an IBSA joint declaration at the summit," he said.

At present, the Eurozone countries have been unable to arrive at a consensus to bail out Greece, which is facing impending sovereign default on its debt. While the political leadership has signaled its willingness, it has been unable, so far, to demonstrate similar will in its actions.

Financial markets are bracing for the worst as a default by Greece could trigger a fresh financial meltdown that could hold devastating consequences for the entire world, even emerging market economies such as India, Brazil and South Africa.

The summit will also consider other issues such as sustainable development, the forthcoming meetings of the Conference of Parties under the UNFCCC and the Conference of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol being hosted by South Africa later this year, the Rio+20 Conference being hosted by Brazil in 2012 and other matters related to deepening of ties under Ibsa.

Singh's official delegation will include External Affairs Minister SM Krishna, Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma, Principal Secretary to the PM Pulok Chatterjee and Secretary (West) in the Ministry of External Affairs Madusudhan Ganapathi.

The summit will be chaired by South African President Jacob Zuma and attended by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. The PM said he also looked forward to holding bilateral meetings with President Zuma and President Rousseff during his stay in Pretoria to exchange views on global, regional and bilateral issues of mutual interest.