BRICS member countries have launched their own infrastructure lender to rival the World Bank, but it will be years before the new financial institution starts doing business.

Though the final communiqu? issued in Durban has a mention of the bank, details such as capitalisation, scope of the bank’s activities, how projects would be distributed and where the bank would be based are left unresolved.

As reported earlier by FE, ahead of the Durban summit, Oliver Stuenkel, professor of International Relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, S?o Paulo, Brazil, had said, “The ‘paper launch’ of the bank, is quite certain – most likely, however, few details will be provided at the summit – rather, an expert group will be tasked to work that out over the coming months and perhaps years.”

So, the club of five has once again missed an opportunity to send a clear signal to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

South Africa had applied to be the seat of the new bank, which would have $50 billion ( euros 39 billion) in starting capital and would make funds available for infrastructure projects within BRICS countries. There will be a fresh attempt to get the bank off the ground at the 2014 BRICS summit in Brazil.

The new bank, when operational, will seek to challenge what is perceived as US dominance at the World Bank. But the World Bank itself responded positively to news of a potential rival, offering “every possible support, as soon as financing, management and location have been clarified”.

Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov said late on Tuesday that plans for the infrastructure lender would be discussed on the fringes of the next G20 summit in April.

Also at the summit, China and Brazil agreed to intensify use of their own respective currencies, rather than the US dollar, in bilateral trade in future, which now means that trade worth $30 billion between the two annually could then be conducted in `Yuan’ or `Real’.The summit agreed on the formation of a

25-member economic council “which would accelerate economic cooperation and partnerships between enterprises and member nations”.