BRICS Banking and the Demise of Alternatives to the IMF and World Bank

Abstract

In mid-2014, the New Development Bank and Contingent Reserve Arrangement were born at the Fortaleza summit of the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) network. Frustrations had mounted with the Bretton Woods and related multilateral institutions responsible for both balance-of-payments support and project finance. The financing hopes of New Developmentalism included the supply of credit for both macroeconomic and microeconomic strategies similar to the ideal-type Brazilian experience during the Workers Party era. However, these hopes soon faded and BRICS efforts to reform the Bretton Woods Institutions had, by 2019, become fruitless. A different, more ambitious approach consistent with an older approach, the dependencia strategy (also in the spirit of John Maynard Keynes), is now much more appropriate, although the balance of forces in the wake of Jair Bolsonaro’s election makes this unlikely.