New Development Bank
- Category
Economy
- Published
29th Apr, 2020
-
India’s Finance and Corporate Affairs minister Nirmala Sitharaman attended the 5th Annual Meeting of Board of Governors of New Development Bank through video-conference.
Context
India’s Finance and Corporate Affairs minister Nirmala Sitharaman attended the 5th Annual Meeting of Board of Governors of New Development Bank through video-conference.
About
- The NDB is a multilateral development bank established by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS)
- The BRICS bank aims to achieve the objective of financing infrastructure and sustainable development projects in BRICS and other emerging economies and developing countries.
- The NDB was initially India’s idea, which it shared with other BRICS members in 2012.
- After two years of negotiations, the bank was created at the 2014 BRICS summit in Fortaleza, Brazil.
- NDB has so far approved 14 projects of India for an amount of $4,183 million.
Key-highlights of the meet:
- India asked the New Development Bank (NDB) to enhance emergency facility to $10 billion to deal with the challenges posed by the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic.
- The country appreciated the efforts of the multilateral lending agency on fast tracking of financial assistance of about $5 billion to BRICS countries, including an emergency assistance of $1 billion to India to combat COVID-19 pandemic.
- Lauding efforts of the NDB in establishing itself as a credible Global Financial Institution, India said it should take appropriate actions to join G-20 forum along with other Multilateral Development Bank (MDBs)/ International Financial Institutions (IFIs).
Measures taken by India to respond to COVID-19 crisis
- Creating a COVID-19 Emergency Fund
- Allocation of $2 billion (Rs 15,000 crore) by the government for strengthening the healthcare system.
- Announcement of a scheme of social support measures amounting to $25 billion (Rs 1.70 lakh crore) to alleviate the hardship of the poor and the vulnerable.
- Insurance cover of $67,000 (Rs 50 lakh) per person to over 2.2 million frontline health workers and others provision of relief to firms in statutory and regulatory compliance matters.
- Easing of monetary policy by the Reserve Bank of India.
- Supplying critical medicine to the needy countries to tackle the COVID-19