BRICS bank to finance new projects in Russia & India
The board of directors of BRICS’ New Development Bank (NDB) has approved three infrastructure and sustainable development projects in India and Russia with loans aggregating $825 million.
NDB said in a statement that its board has approved “a non-sovereign loan of $300 million to Sibur Holding for environmentally sustainable infrastructure development related to ZapSibNefteKhim project.”
The bank added it will provide financing “including reimbursement of expenses for construction of utilities” such as “water treatment facilities, transport and logistics infrastructure.”
Two loans ($350 million and $175 million) will be provided to the government of India for rehabilitating major district roads with a total length of about 2,000 km. The financing aims improving connectivity of the rural interior with the national and state highway networks and to realize “the full benefits of upgrading the state highways and major districts roads, through constructing and upgrading about 350 bridges in the State of Madhya Pradesh.”
According to the bank’s Vice President Vladimir Kazbekov, some 23 projects have been approved earlier for all BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries with the total cost of $5.7 billion. “Next year, we plan to expand projects to somewhere around $7.5 billion,” he told TASS.
The Shanghai-headquartered NDB was established in 2014 and formally opened in July 2015. The goal of the bank, with an initial authorized capital of $100 billion, is to fund sustainable development infrastructure projects in emerging economies.
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