The first BRICS MSME Forum and the third SME Working Group meeting took place in Agra on June 19, 2026, according to a ministry account issued two days later. Business stakeholders and government officials held parallel discussions.
Finance, technology adoption, digitalisation and market access were prominent themes. For a small exporter, these issues are connected: finding a foreign customer is only useful if the firm can finance production and meet the requirements of the shipment.
The WTO's World Trade Report on SMEs explains that limited collateral, incomplete business records and the fixed costs of lending can make finance more difficult and expensive for smaller firms. Such costs are harder to spread when transactions are small.
That provides a concrete reason for involving businesses as well as officials. The burden of paperwork, financing and delivery appears at the level of individual orders, where entrepreneurs can identify obstacles that a broad trade target does not reveal.
The Agra programme combined these policy discussions with an MSME exhibition, placing businesses' products alongside the financing, technology and market-access questions involved in selling them.
