New Delhi, Aug 23 (IANS): Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday said that India gives special importance to the countries of the Global South. 

Addressing the plenary session of BRICS summit in Johannesburg, he said: "We welcome the move to give special importance to the countries of the global south in BRICS under the chairmanship of South Africa. India has also given importance to this subject under its G20 presidency.

"India fully supports the expansion of BRICS, we welcome moving forward with consensus on this," he added.

To make BRICS a future-ready organisation, we will need to make our respective societies also future-ready, and technology will play an important role in this, the Prime Minister said in his address.

"In around two decades, BRICS has undertaken a long and magnificent journey. In this journey, we made numerous achievements," he added.

PM Modi gave a slew of suggestions to BRICS for cooperation in various fields like space, education and skill development, skill mapping, big cat alliance and traditional medicine.

"We are already working on BRICS satellite constellation. Taking this forward, we can work on building a BRICS Space Exploration Consortium," he added.

Secondly, he said that BRICS nations can cooperate in education, skill development and technology.

"To make BRICS a future ready organisation, we need to make our societies future ready, in which technology can play an important role," PM Modi said.

The Prime Minister said that his third suggestion is towards skill mapping by identifying each others' strong points.

Another suggestion was on the Big Cat alliance, under which Modi said, the BRICS nations can cooperate towards preservation of various breeds of tigers and cheetahs found in these nations.

"India's strength is unity in diversity and as all the nations have an ecosystem of traditional medicine, in this context India will be happy to share its expertise with BRICS nations," PM Modi said.