Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman delivered the keynote at a seminar on the New Development Bank's role in mobilising private capital in member countries, held in Jaipur. The NDB, established by BRICS nations in 2015, focuses on infrastructure and sustainable development financing. The seminar highlighted NDB's evolving mandate to crowd in private investment alongside public funding, a critical lever for emerging economies like India seeking infrastructure financing without balance-of-payments pressure.

The New Development Bank (NDB) was established in 2015 under the Fortaleza Agreement (signed July 2014) by the five original BRICS nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — with headquarters in Shanghai, China. India holds a significant founding stake and hosts the NDB's regional office in New Delhi's India Habitat Centre area. The bank's authorised capital is $100 billion, and it began operations with an initial subscribed capital of $50 billion.

The seminar's theme — mobilising private capital — reflects a broader global shift called 'blended finance,' where multilateral development banks (MDBs) use public or concessional funds to de-risk projects and attract private investors. This is crucial for India's infrastructure gap, estimated at trillions of dollars over the coming decade.

For exam purposes, the NDB is distinct from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), also China-associated but separate in membership and mandate. NDB's presidency rotates: K.V. Kamath (India) was the first President; Marcos Troyjo (Brazil) succeeded; Dilma Rousseff (Brazil) is the current President. The NDB expanded membership to include Bangladesh, Egypt, UAE, Uruguay, and Ethiopia — moving beyond the original BRICS five. This expansion is exam-testable because it changes the 'founding vs. current members' distinction frequently used in MCQ distractors.