Limping BRICS Squabbles Over Bank Shares

The leaders of five of the world’s largest emerging markets will showcase a new currency reserve fund and development bank this week. Critics say neither is enough to revive the group’s waning clout.

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, known as the BRICS, will approve the creation of the $100 billion reserve fund and $50 billion bank at a July 15-16 summit in Brazil’s coastal city of Fortaleza and the capital Brasilia, President Dilma Rousseff and other officials said last week. Negotiators are still trying to agree on shareholding in the bank. India wants member stakes to be based on contributions not on economic weight.

The new development bank, which won’t impose policy requirements on borrowers, will help fill fast-growing infrastructure financing needs. The BRICS can also use it to pressure developed countries, particularly the U.S., to advance stalled measures to make global financial institutions more equitable, he said.

With an expected startup capital of $50 billion financed equally by the five members, the bank could lend $3.4 billion per year in a decade, according to a March study by the UN Conference on Trade and Development. That compares with the $61 billion the World Bank expects to lend this year.

The bank will require legislative approval from member countries and at least one year to be implemented. It will eventually open membership to non-BRICS countries and coincides with plans for an Asian infrastructure development bank spearheaded by Beijing, according to an official at the Brazilian Finance Ministry, who requested not to be named because he’s not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

India-China Drive BRICS

Economic growth in the five countries is projected to average 5.37 percent this year, half the pace seen seven years ago. Brazil and Russia will grow 1.3 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively.

The BRICS have evolved from the original term coined in 2001 by then-Goldman Sachs Group Inc. economist Jim O’Neill to describe the growing weight of the largest emerging markets in the global economy. In 2011, South Africa joined to give the BRICS a broader geographic representation. The group’s track record in pursuing a common agenda on the world stage has been mixed.

India Backtracks on Bali

India and South Africa have signaled they may backtrack on a trade facilitation agreement reached at the WTO talks in Bali, Indonesia in December 2013, wrote Carlos Braga and Jean-Pierre Lehmann, professors at Lausanne, Switzerland-based IMD business school.

The joint communique by BRICS trade ministers said member countries stood by the Bali agreement. Brazilian Trade Minister Mauro Borges said he understood India had certain concerns about its implementation.

‘Common Position’

“The meeting of the BRICS trade ministers did not intend to forge a common position on the ratification of the Bali agreement,” Borges told reporters in Fortaleza.

Russia expects BRICS leaders to discuss international issues, including the situation in Ukraine, and speak out against “sanction pressure,” Ushakov told reporters July 10.

All BRICS members except for Russia abstained from a United Nations vote that called on states not to recognize Crimea’s autonomy from Ukraine. Rousseff met with Russia’s Vladimir Putin earlier today in Brasilia.

The BRICS bank, along with the separate $50 billion Asian infrastructure bank, is another way for China to get higher returns on its $3.9 trillion reserves than it does from buying U.S. Treasuries, said Oliver Rui, professor of finance and accounting at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai, the favorite city to headquarter the bank.

The Brazilian real is the second-best performer this year with a 6.8 percent gain, and the rand the third-worst among 16 major currencies tracked by Bloomberg with a 1.7 percent loss. The rupee has gained 2.9 percent and the ruble has lost 4.3 percent.

Each country would have a limited amount of cash it could draw on from the currency reserve, and lenders have an opt-out clause, allowing them to drop out of the agreement any time, according to the Brazilian official.

China will also fund $41 billion of the currency reserve agreement, which member countries will be able to tap in case of balance of payment deficits. South Africa will earmark $5 billion of its reserves and the remaining countries will set aside $18 billion each. Details on the functioning of the $100 billion agreement, which amounts to 2 percent of the BRICS’s pooled reserves, have yet to be worked out.