“Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability”
Your Excellencies, Presidents and Prime Ministers,
Heads of International Organizations,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I commend India for choosing “Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability” as its BRICS Presidency theme.
These priorities are interconnected. Resilience demands stronger productive and technological capacities. Innovation demands investment and access to finance. Sustainability demands new infrastructure and technologies. This will be very difficult without greater cooperation among our countries.
As the global landscape is marked by wars, sanctions, unilateral tariffs, trade and investment disruptions, debt vulnerabilities, and unfulfilled SDG commitments, multilateral cooperation has become urgent. NDB was created to meet these challenges.
Infrastructure remains central to our mandate. Development today requires embedding technology in infrastructure projects, improving climate resilience through innovation, and enhancing technological capacity through investment in people.
The Bank is adapting its operations to these new realities. NDB is focused on the use of national currencies as tools to support investment, to reduce exchange-rate volatility, to overcome cash-flow mismatches faced by private investors, and to strengthen domestic capital markets. In 2025, almost 46% of the Bank’s approved financing was denominated in member-country currencies.
Innovation must be a driver of social development. In Brazil, for example, the Bank is supporting a smart hospital to provide better public healthcare at lower cost. We are combining the capacities of India, China and Russia to deploy digital technologies and AI systems and tools.
NDB is also expanding its financial toolbox, including trade finance, in response to the impressive growth in trade and investment flows among BRICS economies.
These are all examples of cooperation. NDB is helping countries share capabilities, technologies and solutions to address common development challenges. The Bank facilitates this cooperation by mobilizing additional resources through partnerships, co-financing, and guarantees. Finally, membership expansion is crucial for NDB to strengthen its financial reach and support development across the Global South.
Sustainability is increasingly central to our operations. The NDB is expanding climate finance and promoting investment in clean energy, sustainable infrastructure, water, transport and the energy transition.
Excellencies,
The first decade built NDB’s financing capacity. The second decade must mobilize resources at a greater scale to multiply its development impact.
BRICS created the New Development Bank because our countries understood that a changing world required new institutions.
Resilience, innovation, cooperation and sustainability provide a clear direction for the Bank’s next stage of development.
NDB will continue working with its members to transform these priorities into investment, technology and concrete improvements in people’s lives.
Thank you.