GOA: The development bank set up by the BRICS group of emerging economies will ramp up lending to $2.5 billion next year after making its first loans to back green projects, its president KV Kamath told Reuters.
The BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — agreed to create the New Development Bank (NDB) in July 2014 with initial authorized capital of $100 billion. The lender was officially launched a year later.
“The second year is scaling up, concentrating on people, getting all the skillsets in,” said Kamath, a veteran Indian banker appointed as the first head of the Shanghai-based NDB.
He was speaking on the fringes of a weekend BRICS summit hosted in the Indian resort of Goa by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The gathering seeks to add substance to the group that grew out of an acronym devised by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill back in 2003 that projected a long-term boom and global power shift in their favor.
With Russia, Brazil and South Africa on the economic skids and China slowing, the initial euphoria has faded, yet Kamath said the BRICS had much to gain by deepening their cooperation.
“The fact is that these countries, collectively, have for the last few years contributed to more than 50 percent of incremental economic wealth that has been generated globally,” said Kamath. “I don’t see that changing.”
The NDB, headquartered in Shanghai, will expand its staff to 300 over the next three years but run a tight operation that seeks to take quick decisions and transfer experience across all five BRICS member states.
It has already approved loans totalling $900 million to green projects in each member state. It has also started a renminbi-denominated borrowing program, issuing a 3 billion yuan ($450 million) bond.
Kamath, 68, said there was plenty of room for new lenders like the NDB and the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), in addition to established institutions like the World Bank.
“Infrastructure alone has needs globally of $1-1.5 trillion a year — all the multilateral banks put together can do maybe 15 percent of this,” said Kamath, who ran India’s ICICI Bank Ltd. from 1996 until 2009.
“The phrase I would like to use is cooperate and work together, rather than compete. I don’t see competition as a key challenge in this context.”
BRICS development bank to lend $2.5bn next year
BRICS development bank to lend $2.5bn next year
Investment licenses in Saudi Arabia have increased 20-fold in 5 years
RIYADH: The total number of investment licenses issued in Saudi Arabia rose 83.4 percent year on year in the third quarter of the current year to 6,986 licenses, excluding those issued under the campaign to correct the status of violators of the Anti-Concealment Law.
According to the Financial Analysis Unit at Al-Eqtisadiah, investment licenses have increased twentyfold over the past five years, compared with 351 licenses in the third quarter of 2020.
Since the announcement of Vision 2030 in 2016, foreign direct investment inflows have more than quadrupled. They grew by 24.2 percent last year to SR119.2 billion ($31.7 billion), marking the highest value and fastest growth rate in three years. This figure exceeds the annual target of SR109 billion by around 39 percent.
By sector, most licenses issued during the third quarter of 2025 were concentrated in construction activity, accounting for around 37 percent of total licenses, with 2,583 licenses.
This was followed by wholesale and retail trade with 1,214 licenses, representing 17 percent of the total. Manufacturing ranked third with 11 percent, bringing the combined share of the three sectors to 66 percent of total licenses.
Wholesale and retail trade recorded the highest growth rate in investment licenses, with year-on-year growth of 234 percent, followed by the construction sector, human health and social work activities, education, and accommodation and food services, each posting growth of more than 100 percent.
