The vice president of the New Development Bank (NDB) said BRICS countries will enjoy a bright future provided we work hard and cooperate together to maximize our effectiveness.

The NDB is currently preparing to accept new members, Paulo Nogueira Batista told People’s Daily in a recent exclusive interview.

The NDB is the multilateral institution set up 2 years ago by the five BRICS members.

The bank will expand its coverage in the future to increase its capital base and gain greater international influence, he added.

Batista said that Western economists have been predicting a hard landing for China since the 1990s. However, facts have proved that China has been doing remarkably well.

“A growth of 6 or 7 percent per year for a large economy like China is a major achievement,” the NDB official noted, saying that China will keep playing a vital role in the world economy. Batista believes that China would remain a chief factor in world growth.

Many people have been worrying about the slowdown in economic growth of the BRICS countries, but Batista remains positive about the economic prospects of these nations. “China has a large weight in the world economy, and the BRICS countries will continue to hold the key to a large part of what happens in terms of world growth,” Batista predicted.

The NDB officially started operations in Shanghai on July 21, 2015. “We’ve had enormous support from Beijing, and it was really the best decision for the NDB to be based in China,” Batista said.

Batista admitted the importance of the existing banks, including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, but said they are not fulfilling all the needs of the developing countries. “We also intend to be new, as our name promises, whenever there is a need to do things differently,” he said.

“We want to be a bank that is more focused on equal relationships, relationships of respect with borrowing countries,” he said, adding that “we are not going to be in the business of dictating policy or even recommending policy.”

The three-billion-yuan green bond first issued by the NDB in China last summer has been well accepted. Batista said the bank will continue to issue bonds in the national currencies of member countries, which will allow NDB to provide local currency financing.

“It’s a new area that challenges us, but we are confident that we can continue down this road and offer clients something that they don’t normally get from other multilateral development banks,” Batista noted.

With the rise in China’s global position, the voice of developing countries is also getting louder in the international arena.

Batista said that the BRICS countries are one major source of voice for emerging markets and developing countries on international platforms such as the World Bank, G20 summit and International Monetary Fund.

“As China grows in the world, I believe China will naturally have an increasingly greater voice,” he stressed.