The biggest emerging markets are uniting to tackle under-development and currency volatility with plans to set up institutions that encroach on the roles of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
The leaders of the so-called BRICS nations -- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- are set to approve the establishment of a new development bank during an annual summit that starts today in the eastern South African city of Durban, officials from all five nations say. They will also discuss pooling foreign-currency reserves to ward off balance of payments or currency crises.
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BRICS Nations Plan New Bank to Encroach on World Bank Turf
Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg
The leaders of the so-called BRICS nations -- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- are set to approve the establishment of a new development bank during an annual summit that starts today in the eastern South African city of Durban.
The leaders of the so-called BRICS nations -- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- are set to approve the establishment of a new development bank during an annual summit that starts today in the eastern South African city of Durban. Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg
March 22 (Bloomberg) -- South African Trade Minister Rob Davies discusses the likelihood of starting a foreign-currency pool with Brazil, Russia, China and India, and the establishment of a BRICS Business Council. He spoke with Bloomberg's Mike Cohen in Cape Town. (Source: Bloomberg)
March 26 (Bloomberg) -- Stephen Roach, a senior fellow at Yale University and former non-executive chairman for Morgan Stanley in Asia, talks about Cyprus's bailout and the outlook for the European debt crisis. Roach also discusses Japan's central bank monetary policy, and China's new leadership and economic growth. He speaks from Beijing with Susan Li on Bloomberg Television's "First Up." (Source: Bloomberg)
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BRICS Nations Plan New Bank to Encroach on World Bank Turf
Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg
While BRICS leaders may approve the creation of a development bank in principle at the summit, there’s still disagreement on how it should be funded and operated.
While BRICS leaders may approve the creation of a development bank in principle at the summit, there’s still disagreement on how it should be funded and operated. Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg
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BRICS Nations’ New Bank Threatens to Encroach on World Bank Turf
A security guard stands in front of a floral arrangement ahead of the BRICS Summit in Sanya, Hainan Province on April 12, 2011. The BRICS nations have combined foreign-currency reserves of $4.4 trillion and account for 43 percent of the world’s population.
A security guard stands in front of a floral arrangement ahead of the BRICS Summit in Sanya, Hainan Province on April 12, 2011. The BRICS nations have combined foreign-currency reserves of $4.4 trillion and account for 43 percent of the world’s population. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
“The deepest rationale for the BRICS is almost certainly the creation of new Bretton Woods-type institutions that are inclined toward the developing world,” Martyn Davies, chief executive officer of Johannesburg-based Frontier Advisory, which provides research on emerging markets, said in a phone interview. “There’s a shift in power from the traditional to the emerging world. There is a lot of geo-political concern about this shift in the western world.”
The BRICS nations, which have combined foreign-currency reserves of $4.4 trillion and account for 43 percent of the world’s population, are seeking greater sway in global finance to match their rising economic power. They have called for an overhaul of management of the World Bank and IMF, which were created in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944, and oppose the practice of their respective presidents being drawn from the U.S. and Europe.
Reform Needed
“We need to change the way business is conducted in the international financial institutions,” South African International Relations Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said in a March 15 speech in Johannesburg. “They need to be reformed.”
The U.S. has failed to ratify a 2010 agreement to give more sway to emerging markets at the IMF, while it secured Jim Yong Kim, an American, as head of the World Bank last year over candidates from Nigeria and Colombia.
Finance ministers and central bank governors from the BRICS nations are meeting in Durban today to discuss the bank and currency fund, with leaders expected to arrive later today.
Goldman Sachs Asset Management Chairman Jim O’Neill coined the BRIC term in 2001 to describe the four emerging powers he estimated would equal the U.S. in joint economic output by 2020. Brazil, Russia, India and China held their first summit four years ago and invited South Africa to join their ranks in December 2010.
Trade within the group surged to $282 billion last year from $27 billion in 2002 and may reach $500 billion by 2015, according to data from Brazil’s government.
Funding Disagreement
“If they announce a BRICS bank it will be quite something,” O’Neill said in an e-mailed reply to questions on March 15. “At a minimum it symbolizes they can achieve something as political group and means lots of other things could follow in the future. It also means that they will have their own kind of special World Bank, which may aid infrastructure and trade projects.”
While BRICS leaders may approve the creation of a development bank in principle at the summit, there’s still disagreement on how it should be funded and operated.
The meeting may fail to reach a detailed agreement this week on how to fund the bank, said Mikhail Margelov, President Vladimir Putin’s envoy to Africa. Russia favors capping each side’s initial contribution at $10 billion, he said in a March 15 interview in Moscow.