Union Minister of Finance & Corporate Affairs and India’s Governor in New Development Bank (NDB), Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman attended the 6^th Annual Meeting of Board of Governors of New Development Bank through video-conference in New Delhi. The meeting was also attended by Governors/Alternate Governors of Brazil, China, Russia and South Africa.

Due to the current pandemic, this Annual Meeting of NDB was organized in virtual mode. This year's Annual Meeting theme was “New Development Paradigms: The Evolution of Infrastructure” which is well aligned with its mandate.

The Finance Minister underscored India’s quick response to limit the impact of the pandemic and to undertake massive vaccination drives which are resulting in a ’V shape recovery’. Smt. Sitharaman also highlighted that the world’s largest vaccine drive by India is under way and till date, , India has supplied 63.9 million doses of made-in-India COVID vaccine to 80 countries including 10.4 million doses of the vaccine  as a grant. 

While acknowledging the Bank’s achievements and progress made over the last six years, Smt. Sitharaman highlighted NDB's role in countercyclical lending through a $10 billion Emergency Assistance Programme for supporting the member countries in fighting the COVID pandemic. The Finance Minister also stressed the need for NDB to maintain and improve upon the ratings assigned by international rating agencies through adequate capitalisation, high quality governance and prudent management.

The Finance Minister encouraged the NDB to facilitate private sector participation, explore more innovative financing structures, discover co-financing opportunities with other MDBs, develop a pipeline of bankable projects, and promote environmental and social safeguards to enhance the sustainability of infrastructure, etc.

Highlighting the role of Development Financial Institutions (DFIs) in infrastructure financing, she mentioned that India is going to set up a new DFI with initial paid-up capital of around $3 billion with a lending target of $69 billion in next three years. She also suggested NDB to develop a synergistic relationship with these institutions that share its development priorities to achieve greater results.

NDB, a multilateral development bank was set up by the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) in 2014 with the objective of mobilizing resources for infrastructure and sustainable development projects in the BRICS as well as other EMDCs of the world. The Bank has been operationalised in 2015, with its Headquarters in Shanghai, China. NDB has so far approved 18 projects of India for an amount of $6,924 million.

Countercyclical lending and multilateral infrastructure finance urged to support emergency assistance and mobilize sustainable project funding. The New Development Bank meeting emphasized countercyclical lending and emergency assistance during systemic shocks, the necessity of adequate capitalization and governance to support credit ratings, and the promotion of innovative financing, private sector participation, co financing with other multilateral development banks, project pipeline development, and environmental and social safeguards to mobilize resources for infrastructure and sustainable development.