BusinessDay.gif Mboweni and Maasdorp off to BRICS bank Wyndham Hartley, Business Day, Johannesburg, 29 June 2015 The New Development Bank (NDB) being established by the BRICS nations will be operational by the end of the year, and two South Africans will travel to Russia early next month for induction into the bank's management system. SA is due to contribute an initial $5bn to the bank. The BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China and SA - decided at its fifth summit in Durban in 2013 to establish the NDB, with each country contributing to a $100bn pool in startup financing. The bank is designed to complement existing western lending institutions. Its primary function will be to fund infrastructure development in emerging countries. On Friday Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene announced that the Cabinet had endorsed the nomination of Leslie Maasdorp as vice-president of the NDB and that former Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni had been appointed as nonexecutive director. The finance ministry said Parliament had ratified "the agreement on the New Development Bank" and "the Treaty for the Establishment of a BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement". "The New Development Bank is expected to be operational by the end of 2015. The process to establish the African Regional Centre is under way, and upon commencement of business will immediately be open to consider projects on the continent," Mr Nene said. The ministry also said the inaugural meeting of the board of governors for the NDB would take place on July 7 in Russia, where the management of the bank would be formally appointed. Mr Maasdorp, who is a well-known banker in SA, spent three years at the Reserve Bank serving as an adviser to Mr Mboweni. "It is an exciting new challenge and, yes, I will be based in Shanghai, which has been chosen as the headquarters for the bank," he said. But Mr Maasdorp added that he would also have to spend time in Johannesburg, which will be home to the NDB's African regional centre. Mr Maasdorp said his term of office would be six years but that the agreement provided for non-renewable five-year terms thereafter. He said that while there was speculation that the NDB would be a counter to the World Bank, "we prefer to see it as playing a complementary role to existing financial institutions". Mr Mboweni said he would be unable to comment until after the induction in Russia. BRICS, at its sixth summit last July in Brazil, signed the document to create the bank. The new bank is expected to have $100bn in subscribed capital when it is fully operational, with a further $100bn as a reserve currency pool. Unlike the World Bank, which assigns votes based on capital share, in the NDB each participant country will be assigned one vote, and none of the countries will have veto power. From: <http://www.bdlive.co.za/economy/2015/06/29/mboweni-and-maasdorp-off-to-bric s-bank> http://www.bdlive.co.za/economy/2015/06/29/mboweni-and-maasdorp-off-to-brics -bank -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
