New Delhi, May 11: Eminent banker Kundapur Vaman Kamath was today appointed as head of the USD 50 billion New Development Bank being set up by the five emerging economies of BRICS grouping. Kamath will have a five year term of the bank, which is likely to be operationalised within one year, Finance Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi said.
Kamath has been named the first president of the NDB, Mehrishi said.The BRICS nations account for nearly USD 16 trillion in GDP and 40 per cent of the world's population.
The bank will start with an initial paid-in-capital of USD 50 billion with each BRICS country contributing USD 10 billion.
After serving at ICICI for more than a decade, Kamath had moved to Asian Development Bank, Manila, in the Private Sector department in 1988.
His principal work experience at ADB was in various projects in China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and other emerging nations.
Making a strong pitch for speeding up the creation of the BRICS development bank, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said last year that India hopes to ratify the agreement over the financial institution by 2014-end, and 2016 should be set as the target for its inauguration.
Modi had made this remark at an informal meeting with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and South African President President Jacob Zuma on the sidelines of the G20 summit at Brisbane (Australia) in November.
India's presidency will be followed by Brazil and Russia who will have five years term each under an agreement reached after intense negotiations among the five country-grouping.
"The appointment will be effective when he becomes free from his current assignment. I think he is on some boards. It may take couple of days," Mehrishi said.
"There is no final decision on his tenure. But it is likely to be 5 years. We got ratification from President of India," he said, adding it has to be ratified by all the member nation.
India is hoping to get more funds for infrastructure development from BRICS bank, he said.
The decision to set up this multilateral funding agency was taken in Fortaleza, Brazil at the BRICS Summit which was attended by Modi.
The BRICS development bank, an idea which was conceived in Delhi in 2012 and approved in Durban in 2013, is to be set up with an initial corpus of USD 50 billion, with scope for expansion up to USD 100 billion when new members are added.
For the initial USD 50 billion, India wants equal contribution by all the five members of USD 10 billion. This is because India doesn't want the development bank to fall into the ownership pattern of IMF and the World Bank, with a distorted shareholding.
About K V Kamath
K V Kamath was born on 2 December 1947 in a Konkani speaking Gaud Saraswat Brahmin family (GSB) in Mangalore Karnataka, where he spent most of his early years. After completing Higher Secondary and Pre-University from St. Aloysius College, he joined National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal (formerly known as Karnataka Regional Engineering College) for a Bachelors Degree in Mechanical Engineering. After graduating from NIT Surathkal in 1969, he joined the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) for a Post Graduate Diploma in Management.
After graduating from IIM-A in 1971, Kamath started his career with ICICI (Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India) in the Project Finance division and moved on to different departments to gather experience, including establishing new business lines such as leasing, venture capital, and credit ratings as well as handling general management responsibilities. As part of his general management responsibilities, he initiated and implemented ICICI's computerisation program. Substantial investments in technology from those early years have resulted in systems that are today a competitive advantage for ICICI. Kamath has generally been credited with expanding ICICI's businesses to evolve it into a technology-enabled financial organisation catering to the financial needs of corporate and retail customers.
In 1988, Kamath joined the Asian Development Bank, Manila in their Private Sector department. His principal work experience at ADB was in various projects in China, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Bangladesh, and Vietnam. He was the ADB representative on the boards of several companies.
In May 1996, Kamath returned to ICICI as its managing director and chief executive officer. Kamath was instrumental in expanding the Group's services to the retail customers. He initiated a process of a series of acquisitions of non-banking finance companies in 1996–98 and led the way to the formation of ICICI Bank.
On 2 May 2011, he was appointed as Non-Executive Chairman of the second-largest software exporter, Infosys Ltd. (earlier Infosys Technologies Ltd.).
He currently is a Lead independent director at Infosys[5] after having stepped down from chairmanship to make way for N.R.Narayana Murthy. He is designated to be non-executive Chairman of Infosys Board, effective 11 October 2014.
Comments
Add new comment