Informal Summits

News:Chinese President’s proposed visit to India for the second Informal Summit is scheduled to take place in the Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu on October 11-12.

Facts:

About Informal summit:

• Informal Summits act as supplementary exchanges to annual Summits and other formal exchanges such as the G20 Summit, EU-India Summit and the BRICS Summit among others.
• Informal Summits may not take place on a fixed annual or biennial schedule.
• They are impromptu in the sense that they take place when a need for them is perceived by the concerned nations.
• Informal summit allows for direct and free exchange of views between countries which may not be possible to do through formal bilateral and multilateral meetings as they are agenda driven where specific issues are discussed.
• China is not the only country with which India has had an Informal Summit. 
• In May 2018,India had met Russia’s President for their first Informal Summit to discuss international matters in a broad and long-term perspective.

Significance of informal summit:

• Informal summits allows for quietly discussing contentious issues away from the media glare and publicity.
• The absence of any formal joint communique also enables each side to spell out its own impressions of any outcomes.
• It also allows leaders to meet informally in order to know and understand each other better.