Dilma Rousseff, President of the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB), delivered the keynote address to the eighth annual meeting of the NDB Board of Governors, May 30-31 in Shanghai, hosted by China under the theme “Shaping a New Era for Global Development.”
Giving some history, Rousseff said at the plenary, that the NDB, “was created in 2014, during the BRICS Summit in Fortaleza, when I was the President of Brazil. Seeing that its birth resulted from the collective will of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, the NDB is often referred to as the ‘BRICS bank.’ With the important entry of other countries, this acronym has now become a name and it no longer stands for the five founders only, but for all the countries of the Global South that belong now, and that will in the future belong to the Bank.”
Rousseff also emphasized that the NDB possesses “a profile that makes it stand out among multilateral development banks. The NDB focuses primarily on developing countries and emerging economies.” This is especially important now because, “the world’s economy has been facing the effects of high inflation and of monetary policies that lead to rising interest rates, thus giving rise to bank failures, excessive leverage, and increasing the risk of recession in both developed and developing countries. The end of quantitative easing and the adoption of quantitative tightening are generating shock waves of instability that hit the entire world economy.”
She continued, “As a former President of a developing country, I know how important multilateral banks are, and above all, I know the immense challenge of obtaining financing on the scale required to meet the economic, social, logistical, and environmental challenges of these countries.”
Rousseff has set as a priority to lend and to trade in local currencies: “Currently, local-currency financing represents approximately 22% of the Bank’s portfolio, largely driven by renminbi-denominated loans,” she said. “For the 2022-2026 strategic cycle, our goal is that 30% of the Bank’s project financing volume will be denominated in the national currencies of our members.” (https://www.ndb.int/insights/address-by-ndb-president-dilma-rousseff-at-opening-of-the-plenary-session-of-the-8th-annual-meeting-of-the-ndb/)
