When India hosts the 18th BRICS summit in New Delhi on September 12-13, 2026, under the banner of “Humanity First”, the occasion will be draped in a familiar promise: that the bloc is building an alternative to the western-dominated global financial order. A new bank to rival the World Bank. A reserve fund to free countries from the International Monetary Fund. A path away from the dominance of the U.S. dollar. Seventeen years into the BRICS project, it is worth asking a blunt question: has any of this actually materialised?The short answer is no; the reasons have less to do with intention than with structure. The BRICS countries, for all their rhetoric about reshaping the world, are deeply enmeshed in the very system that they claim to challenge. The institutions they built reflect that reality.The same bank, different nameplateThe New Development Bank (NDB), launched in 2015, was BRICS’s flagship creation. It was supposed to offer developing countries an alternative to the World Bank: loans without the political strings, governance without western dominance, financing in local currencies rather than dollars.
Editorial | More heft: On India and the 18th BRICS SummitA decade later, half of the NDB’s outstanding bonds are denominated in U.S. dollars, with the Chinese yuan making up most of the rest. The South African rand accounts for just one per cent. Local currency lending, which the bank’s own leadership set as a target of 30% of its portfolio by the end of this year, sat at roughly 22% as of mid-2025. The NDB’s first rupee-denominated bond was still in planning stages as late as September 2025, a full decade after the bank opened for business.The NDB courts the same western credit-rating agencies (S&P, Fitch, Moody’s) that the BRICS governments publicly criticise as biased against developing countries. And when those agencies’ rules collided with bloc solidarity, the ratings won. In March 2022, days after Russia invaded Ukraine, the NDB froze all operations related to Russia, a founding member and 20% shareholder, to protect its own credit standing in New York. Russia has since relinquished its turn at the NDB’s rotating presidency, extending the Brazilian incumbent’s term to 2030. Whatever else this is, it is not an institution that operates outside western financial discipline.The bank’s total project approvals reached $39 billion by the end of 2024. To put that in perspective: the World Bank Group commits roughly $100 billion every year. In a full decade of operation, the NDB has approved less than what its supposed rival disburses in six months. More importantly, the NDB co-finances projects with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) rather than offering a genuine alternative to them. The relationship is complementary, not competitive. That may be smart banking, but it is a far cry from the institution’s founding rhetoric.The safety net nobody usesAlongside the NDB, the BRICS countries established the Contingent Reserve Arrangement in 2015: a $100 billion pool of foreign exchange reserves meant to help member-countries weather financial crises without turning to the IMF. In principle, this was the most radical idea in the BRICS repertoire: a mechanism that could, over time, break the IMF’s monopoly on emergency lending to the Global South.In practice, the CRA has never been activated. Not once in a decade. And a closer look at the fine print reveals why. Any member-country that wants to draw more than 30% of its allotted share must first enter into a programme with the IMF. The escape hatch, in other words, leads right back to the institution that it was supposed to escape. The CRA has no permanent staff, no independent surveillance capacity, no research wing. It is, in effect, a promissory note dressed up as an institution; one that, by its own rules, cannot function independently of the very body it was created to rival.
