China-based Brics bank set for lead role in hunger alliance this year, Brazil says

The Brics-founded New Development Bank could help launch a fund by the end of the year to guarantee cheap loans for poor families in Africa and Latin America, Brazil’s social development minister said.

The scheme would be the Shanghai-based lender’s first financial commitment to Brazil’s global anti-hunger alliance, an initiative sidelined by Washington’s presidency of the G20 this year.

Wellington Dias told the South China Morning Post on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York that the chances of a first pilot programme, worth as little as US$200 million, getting off the ground by December were “very big”. The bank is designing the scheme with four other development lenders, he added, and each still has to run its compliance checks.

The money would go to Brazil’s Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, launched at the G20 summit Brazil hosted in Rio de Janeiro in November 2024 but dropped from the group’s agenda after the United States took over the rotating presidency in December last year.