Opening address by President Troyjo at the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors of the New Development Bank

Honorable Governors,
Excellencies,

Let me start by congratulating Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for her leadership as chair of the Board.
And welcome Secretary Fatima Yasmin and Minister Mohamed Al Hussaini in their first Annual Meeting of the NDB.
I also wish to express our gratitude to all Governors because your guidance and your strategic role in this Board is at the heart of NDB’s continued success.
As you know, 2022 is a very special year for NDB.
And it is so for two reasons.
First, it marks the 10th anniversary of the decision by BRICS to explore the establishing of a new development bank.
And second, because the current year is the transition from NDB’s first 5-year General Strategy to its second one, which will guide the Bank going forward.
At the time NDB was conceived, putting together a brand new institution focused on emerging economies was nothing but a far away dream.
But our founders took an important decision to make that dream come true.
And transforming those aspirations into reality was no easy task.
Our countries built an international organization from the ground-up.
This young institution has grown a lot.
NDB is gaining scale and relevance.
And we are delivering on the vision of our founders.
We have largely achieved the main targets that were set in our first General Strategy.
And this was only possible for your guidance and support.

Excellencies,
NDB has now approved over USD 30 billion for infrastructure and sustainable development. We are talking about more than 80 projects.
These are projects that make peoples’ lives better.
They go from clean energy to urban development, from sanitation to social infrastructure.
The theme of our year’s Annual Meeting is “NDB: Optimizing Development Impact”.
We want to enhance the impact approach echoing the spirit of the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement.
It reflects the national development priorities of all of our member countries.
We monitor and report on the alignment of NDB’s financing with the Sustainable Development Goals, and the Bank’s commitment to climate finance.

Excellencies,
Our Bank has continued making important progress since I last reported to you.
At the 6th BoG Annual Meeting last year, Governors encouraged Management to advance with membership expansion.
And, as it has been said here, we have followed your guidance — and welcomed the admission of Bangladesh, the UAE, Egypt and Uruguay into the NDB family.
We have set our footprints in various regions of the world, through the Middle East and North Africa.
Our new members bring over 280 million people that can benefit from NDB’s mission.
And they strengthen, and it has also been said here, the role of NDB as a platform to nurture cooperation in infrastructure and sustainable development.
As we go forward, we will continue to work towards expanding NDB’s membership in a gradual and balanced manner.
Last year, we moved to our beautiful permanent headquarters in Shanghai.
I want to take this opportunity once again to thank the Government of China and the Municipality of Shanghai for their strong support.
Our new home – and hopefully we can host you all there in person very soon – is more than just an office building.
It is modern, it is sustainable, it is vibrant — it is therefore a powerful representation of what NDB stands for.
We envision the headquarters to be a center for international cooperation.
At the same time, it is important to highlight that our regional offices keep us closer to the needs of member countries.
And this year, 2022, is also very important because we are establishing our Indian Regional Office in GIFT City.
Expanding our presence in India and therefore contributing to the preparation and implementation of projects.
So we now have presence on the ground in all our founding members.
Last year, NDB approved new loans totaling USD 5.1 billion.
These projects in 2021 alone are expected to:
– Build or upgrade more than 660 km of roads and bridges,
– Construct 30 km of underground metro lines,
– Avoid 7.5 million tons of CO2 emissions per year.

Excellencies,
2022 also marks the beginning of a new strategic cycle for our Bank.
And as we look towards the future, we want to make sure that the NDB is always enhancing the quality of its projects.
Our duty is to optimize the development impact of what we do as an institution.
30% of total approvals going forward will be in local currencies.
30% will go to non-sovereign operations.
And our new strategy is preparing the Bank to deal with new development paradigms and the future of development finance.
We are aware that multilateral development banks face challenges and resources are limited compared to the huge demands for infrastructure.
So optimizing development impact is even more of a paramount importance.
Especially because the very concept of infrastructure is evolving to address both the traditional challenges and those opportunities that are brought forth by the new industrial revolution.
So future investments will have to be smarter, more sustainable and climate-resilient.
And it is in such context that we will direct about 40% of our approvals in this next five-year cycle to projects that contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation, including energy transition.
As we enter this new cycle, we will be faced with new challenges in an ever more exciting journey.
We will persevere and continue to build the NDB as a premier development bank for emerging economies.
Thank you very much.