(Ecofin Agency) - The NDB Development Bank launched by BRICS states – Brazil, Russia, India, Chian, South Africa – announced on October 16 through its president, Kundapur Vaman Kamath, it will lend $2.5 billion in 2017. “The second year is scaling up, concentrating on people, getting all the skillsets in,” Kamath said cited by Reuters.

Talking at the BRICS summit held in Gao (South-West India), the former president of ICICI Bank, India’s leading private bank, said there was plenty room for new banks like NDB and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) asides well-known lenders such as 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 highlighting that the various multilateral financial institutions should “cooperate and work together rather than compete”.

Shanghai-based NDB wants to mobilize resources for infrastructures and development projects in the BRICS countries and other emerging economies.

It is often believed that the new bank was established to shake the global finance architecture designed by the Bretton Woods accords and is considered as an alternative to International Monetary Fund and World Bank which are criticized for their inability to reflect the growing size of BRICS that represent 46% of the world’s population and 19.8% of its GDP.