The BRICS grouping of emerging market nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — will start to open local offices of the New Development Bank (NDB), also known as the BRICS bank, in 2016, Russia’s TASS news agency reports, citing Andrey Bokarev, a department head at the Russian Finance Ministry.
The first office in South Africa will be opened at the end of 2015 or by the beginning of the next year, he said.
After that, an office in Brazil will open, and then in Russia, the official said.
The selection process of investment projects for the NDB will start by the end of this year, NBD Vice President from Russia Vladimir Kazbekov told TASS on Tuesday.
“Certainly, each country has its portfolio of projects. I think serious screening will start already by the end of the year,” Kazbekov said.
The NDB will start lending in local currency by April 2016 and its member countries will be the primarily focus of the bank, K.V. Kamath, the President of the NDB said two weeks ago.
On July 7 the BRICS officially launched their $100 billion bank and signed an agreement on their $100 billion currency reserve pool — also known as the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) — ahead of the summit of SCO and BRICS that was held in the Russian industrial city of Ufa on July 8-10.
The NBD expects to present its five-year development strategy of the bank by the end of this year.
The newly minted BRICS bank will be used to finance new infrastructure and development projects in the BRICS countries, in addition to other emerging market countries.
The launch of the BRICS bank is seen as a first step in breaking the dominance of the U.S. dollar in global trade, as well as dollar-backed institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, both U.S.-based institutions that BRICS countries have had little influence within.
In July 2014, a historic milestone for the BRICS group was reached as the group signed a document to form the the $100 billion NDB in addition to the $100 billion CRA.
The new bank will be headquartered in Shanghai, and will first be led by India, followed by Brazil, and then Russia.
The BRICS group was established in 2010, when South Africa joined Brazil, Russia, India, and China in what was previously known as BRIC. The BRICS group represents 42 percent of the world’s population and roughly 20 percent of the world’s economy based on GDP, and 30 percent of the world’s GDP based on PPP. Total trade between the countries is $6.14 trillion, or nearly 17 percent of the world’s total.
Discussion
No comments yet.