BRICS bank's development role hailed

JOHANNESBURG－The New Development Bank established by BRICS countries has flexible policies geared toward tackling infrastructure and development challenges that emerging economies face, says Monale Ratsoma, director-general of the bank's Africa Regional Center.

"The way the bank is modeling itself is targeted at addressing issues developing countries are struggling with," Ratsoma said at the regional center in Johannesburg.

Unlike other major financial institutions, the bank is willing to finance private sector projects, even though it has mostly funded government and parastatal projects since it opened in the region in 2017, he said.

"We are now increasingly seeing in our portfolio that corporate projects are coming through, and private projects are coming through in South Africa."

Ratsoma hailed the bank's founding as a game-changer, because it is the first of its kind that has been established by a group of emerging economies, and through the bank they could shape everything based on the challenges the countries face.

The bank provided a loan to the national electricity utility Eskom to help it tackle its problems through renewable energy programs and reducing emissions, he said.

The bank is exploring how to expand its membership, which will enable it to do more in certain areas, he said, citing as an example a water project the bank has financed in Lesotho. The project will augment the water supply from the country to semiarid South Africa.

"South Africa is a water-scarce country, so the economic development impact of that can be easily measurable," Ratsoma said.

Xinhua