The BRICS Bank That Cannot Say Who May Join
Geopolitics · Finance
Key Facts
- —The bank The New Development Bank (NDB) is the BRICS bloc’s multilateral lender, founded in 2015 and headquartered in Shanghai.
- —The owners The five founding BRICS countries hold the largest shares, each around 18.7% of subscribed capital.
- —The newcomers Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, Algeria and Uzbekistan have completed membership since 2021.
- —The catch Iran said it would join, but the bank couldn’t confirm; Colombia’s accession bill is still stuck in Congress.
- —The pitch The NDB lends a growing share in local currencies, without the policy conditions Western-led lenders attach.
Of everything BRICS has built, only the bank has an address, a balance sheet and loan officers. It is also where the bloc’s expansion debate stops being rhetoric and becomes arithmetic.
What the bank is for
The NDB was created to fund infrastructure and sustainable development in emerging markets.
Its five founding members, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, each hold about 18.7% of subscribed capital. That equal split was designed so no single country could dominate the bank.
Its selling point is speed and non-interference: loans come without the governance conditions that Western-led multilateral lenders attach. A growing share is paid out in local currencies rather than US dollars.
That model has found customers. The African Union’s water-infrastructure drive has drawn on NDB money.
Latin American borrowers, from Brazil to Uruguay, have used it for energy and transport projects.
Who can join — the official answer
Formally, membership is open to any United Nations member state. The bank’s Board of Governors must approve new entrants, and the founders’ capital shares give them effective control over admissions.
In practice, admission tracks BRICS politics. Bangladesh and the UAE joined in 2021, Egypt in 2023, Algeria in 2025 and Uzbekistan in June 2026.
Each fitted a founder’s diplomatic priorities at the time.
Uruguay, Colombia, Ethiopia, Angola and Zimbabwe are listed by the bank as “prospective members.” They have been approved in principle but have not yet deposited the paperwork that makes membership official.
The Iran question
Iran’s central bank governor said in mid-August that the country would join soon. Asked to confirm, the bank could not — a careful sentence that hints at a sanctions problem.
Iran has been a full BRICS member since 2024, so its application is procedurally natural. But a sanctioned central bank inside the NDB’s ownership could complicate the bank’s access to dollar funding markets and its credit rating.
Watch the New Delhi summit for a resolution: a quiet accession, a public deferral, or some form of limited participation.
The Colombia lesson
Colombia shows that the obstacle is not always in Shanghai. Bogotá’s government agreed to join in 2025 and sent a ratification bill to Congress that November.
By September 2026, that bill had still not become law, and Colombia remained a “prospective,” not full, member. Joining a development bank is domestic politics first.
Why it matters beyond the BRICS
Every loan the NDB signs is one the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank or a Western export agency did not make. For borrowers, competition among lenders is straightforwardly good news.
For investors, the bank’s membership list shows the bloc’s real reach. It is updated by who can own a share, not by communiqués.
How the money moves
An NDB loan differs from a World Bank loan. It has shorter approval steps, no policy conditions, and often pays out in the borrower’s own currency.
Brazil’s renewable-energy and logistics projects and South Africa’s grid investments follow this pattern.
Local-currency lending shifts exchange-rate risk from the borrower to the bank. That only works while the bank can still raise hard currency cheaply, which is where ownership politics returns.
The rating is the real asset
Rating agencies give the NDB some of the highest grades around: AA+ from S&P, AA from Fitch, AAA from Japan’s JCR. Those ratings let it borrow cheaply and lend below market rates.
So every membership choice is also a credit choice. Admitting a sanctioned or unstable shareholder could raise the cost of all its existing loans.
This is the unstated argument in the Iran file. It is why the board moves slowly, even when summit politics push the other way.
What applicants should actually expect
A realistic accession takes two to four years: domestic ratification first, then capital subscription, then board approval. Colombia’s stalled bill shows where most applications stall — at home, in committee.
For Latin American and African governments, the choice is simple. They weigh cheaper infrastructure money against a seat in the bloc’s politics.
The bank versus the old institutions
The NDB’s loan book remains a fraction of the World Bank’s, and nobody in Shanghai pretends otherwise. The competition is not size but terms: where the older institutions attach governance conditions, the NDB attaches none.
That difference is why its membership queue matters politically. Every accession is a small vote against the existing order.
It is also a small bet that the newcomer can keep its own books clean.
What New Delhi decides for the bank
The Iran episode exposed a real gap: the bank has no published rulebook for who gets in and when. A clear process, if New Delhi produces one, would make the queue predictable.
Another delay would show that membership is still a gift from the founders. Either way, the bank enters its second decade as the only BRICS institution whose progress can be counted: loans signed, members added.
What the founders get out of it
For China, the bank spreads its development model without the political cost of bilateral lending. For India and Brazil, it is a reminder that they own the institution as much as Beijing does.
Russia’s stake is the most uncertain. The bank paused new business with Russian entities after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and its shares now sit largely idle.
The founding five’s equality exists mostly on paper. In practice, sanctions already reach inside the bank.
The projects that made its name
The bank’s portfolio is deliberately unglamorous: transmission lines, water systems, logistics corridors and renewable plants. In Brazil it has funded energy and transport, and in South Africa a loan of up to US$1 billion for urban infrastructure.
In India, it has backed metros and rural infrastructure.
The African Union‘s decision to tap the bank for water infrastructure was one of the year’s clearest signs of its growing reach. A lender created as a statement is slowly becoming a utility.
President Dilma Rousseff was re-elected to a second term in 2025. She has outlined a five-year strategy built around digital and energy infrastructure and local-currency lending.
What the bank has never faced is a real crisis. No member has defaulted, and no sanctions shock has hit its balance sheet directly.
Connected Coverage
Iran Says It Will Join the BRICS Bank — Bank Can’t Confirm
Colombia’s Law to Join the BRICS Bank Died in Congress Without a Single Debate
30+ Nations Await a BRICS Seat — New Delhi Votes in September
The Big Picture
BRICS Expansion — all our coverage of the bloc’s growth and its limits
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