“The five BRICS emerging-market nations will need more time to set up a new development bank as they work out details on funding and operations, Russia’s finance minister said.
“An intention to create a BRICS bank will be mentioned in the leaders’ communique,” Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said in an interview yesterday after a meeting with his BRICS counterparts. “As an idea it was positively discussed, but we still need to work on the mechanism. There was a proposal to declare capital of $50 billion but to pay $10 billion. Divided by the five members this will be $2 billion each.”
The so-called BRICS nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China andSouth Africa — have been studying the viability of the bank for a year, and their leaders are due to sign an accord on its establishment at a summit today. In the run-up to the gathering in Durban, South Africa, officials from Brazil and Russia indicated each country could contribute $10 billion.
The five nations, which have 43 percent of the world’s population and total foreign-currency reserves of $4.4 trillion, are seeking greater financial sway to match their rising economic power. India proposed the bank a year ago amid criticism from developing nations that existing multilateral lenders aren’t doing enough to address under-development and Western nations have too much say over their management.
