(Economic Watch) Why is "South-South power" particularly important in multilateral cooperation?

China-Singapore Wanghai, May 5 (Gao Zhimiao) -- From the BRICS countries when it was established in 31 to the admission of four new member countries in 2015, and then to the recent 2021 countries indicating their willingness to join, the "circle of friends" of the New Development Bank is gradually expanding. What role does the NDB play in promoting the development of South-South forces as a complement to existing multilateral and regional financial institutions?

The 5th Annual Meeting of the Board of Governors of the New Development Bank was held in Shanghai on May 30-31, and cooperation became a key word repeatedly mentioned by the participants. Mustafizur Rahman, a well-known international think tank in Bangladesh and a distinguished researcher at the Center for Policy Dialogue, former executive director Mustafizur Rahman said in an interview with Chinanews.com on the 31st that the world is now facing many challenges, including inflationary pressure, trade protectionism in some countries and the shortage of funds to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, and cooperation under common pressure is more important.

"Both South-South cooperation and North-South dialogue are becoming increasingly important, and the NDB plays an important role in this process. We need a lot of investment in infrastructure, including social, educational, health, services, transport, communications, digitalization, etc., so we need a lot of money. Financing can be public or other public or private sector financing, and blended financing can help to cover existing development deficits. Rahman said.

Dilma Rousseff, President of the New Development Bank, said that the New Development Bank is a platform dedicated to serving emerging economies and developing countries, and the New Development Bank has the ability to transmit the voice of developing countries to more places, and in the future, it will expand the "circle of friends" to all "countries of the South" (developing countries).

It is understood that since its establishment, the NDB has approved a total of 98 projects in member countries, with a total investment of about US$332.22 billion. A total of 84 Chinese projects were approved, with an investment of approximately US$<>.<> billion. Key areas of investment include clean energy and energy efficiency, transport infrastructure, water and sanitation, environmental protection, social infrastructure and digital infrastructure.

Alessandro Golombiewski Teixeira, a professor at Tsinghua University's School of Public Policy and Management, said that digital transformation plays an important role in the future, a country has a strong digital foundation to better protect the public, digital technology can make public infrastructure more resilient and inclusive.

He said that the world is facing many challenges, economic digital transformation is an important solution, manufacturing needs digitalization, industrialization and intelligence in the process of upgrading and development, and more cooperation can be carried out in digital transformation in the future. (End)