ABSTRACT
Funded at $100 billion each, the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) and New Development Bank (NDB) represent ‘sub-imperial’ finance, insofar as, by all indications, they fit into – instead of providing alternatives to – the prevailing world systems of sovereign debt and project credits. Balance of payments constraints for BRICS members will not be relieved by the CRA, which requires an IMF intervention after just 30% of the quota is borrowed. In this context the NDB would appear close to the Bretton Woods Institution model, promoting frenetic extractivist calculations based on US dollar financing and hence more pressure to export.
