Dilma Rousseff, President of the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB), and Chinese Finance Minister Liu Kun, who is also vice-chairman of the NDB’s board of governors, have extended an invitation to Argentine Finance Minister Sergio Massa to attend the Bank’s 8th annual meeting that will take place in Shanghai over May 30-31. Entitled “Shaping a New Era for Global Development,” and hosted by China, the meeting will include not only finance ministers of member nations, but also representatives of national governments, bankers, business leaders and representatives of civil society.
According to the Argentine dailies Dangdai and Infobae today, a top agenda item of the meeting will be the issue of modifying Article 7 of the Bank’s statutes to allow it to pre-finance Brazilian exports to Argentina, which would pay for those exports in pesos, to be later converted to Brazilian reals. This type of non-dollar trade arrangement would mean that Argentina wouldn’t have to use its very scarce dollar reserves to pay for imports from Brazil.
This matter was discussed by Argentine President Alberto Fernández and Brazil’s Lula da Silva when the two met in Brasilia on May 2, at which time Lula expressed his desire to assist Argentina at a time of grave financial crisis. The NDB has a contingency fund to deal with market crises but, so far, it can only be accessed by member nations.
