EBRD President concludes visit of NDB annual meeting in Delhi

Memorandum of Understanding signed between the two international financial institutions

EBRD President Sir Suma Chakrabarti has represented the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development at the second annual meeting of the New Development Bank (NDB) in New Delhi, India.

Set up in 2014 to invest in the infrastructure and sustainable development of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), the NDB is one of the youngest development banks in the world. It is headquartered in Shanghai, China.

During his visit, President Chakrabarti addressed the opening panel of the meeting, which had the theme “Building a Sustainable Future”. He highlighted the growing economic importance of developing countries and the increasingly active role they are playing in shaping the multilateral agenda. President Chakrabarti also stressed the growing role of the private sector in delivering the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed in September 2015.

“There is growing recognition that the investment we need to finance the SDGs cannot be delivered by the public sector alone. Importantly, and in a significant shift from the consensus in the past, there is a widespread acceptance that much of this investment will have to come from the private sector,” President Chakrabarti said. He called upon multilateral development institutions to work together even more closely to benefit from each other’s comparative strengths and advantages and to jointly pursue the SDGs and leverage private sector investment.

President Chakrabarti was joined during the opening session by the head of the European Investment Bank, Werner Hoyer, and head of the African Development Bank, Akinwumi Adesina.

NDB President K.V. Kamath acknowledged the assistance that came from other multilateral development banks at the initial stages of establishing the NDB. As EBRD President Chakrabarti noted, this assistance came in the form of advice on strategies and policies, governance, business models, evaluation and procurement, among others.

The NDB and EBRD presidents signed a Memorandum of Understanding between the two institutions, setting out a framework for future cooperation. In the document the institutions agree to collaborate and exchange information in recognition of their mutual goal to foster sustainable development and infrastructure in the emerging markets of their respective regions of operations.