The measures are intended to provide an alternative to the current international financial system.

Leaders of the Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, BRICS, bloc of emerging economies launched a 100 billion US Dollars (about FCFA 48,477 billion) development bank and a currency reserve pool on July 15, 2014. In their first concrete step towards reshaping the Western-dominated international financial system, they also set up a currency reserve pool of the same amount – the Contingent Reserves Arrangement - to help countries forestall short-term liquidity pressures, agency reports said.

Speaking at end of their summit that ended yesterday, July 16, 2014 in Brazil, the country’s leader, Dilma Rousseff said setting up the currency reserve was a priority for the countries to protect themselves from crisis scenarios: "It will be a kind of security net to increase protection for BRICS countries as well as other countries. It's a question of our security," Al Jazeera TV reported.

The bank will begin with a subscribed capital of 50 billion US Dollars (about FCFA 24,238.5 billion) divided equally between its five founders. It is scheduled to start lending in 2016 and will be opened to membership by other countries, but the capital share of BRICS nations cannot drop below 55 per cent.

The contingency currency pool on the other hand will be held in the reserves of each BRICS country and can be shifted to another member to cushion balance-of-payments difficulties. The initiative of setting up the pool gathered momentum after the reverse in the flows of cheap dollars that fueled a boom in emerging markets for a decade.

The objective of the BRICS bank is to break away from a model that gives little voting rights to emerging economies and perpetuates the dominance of the United States and Europe over the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The new bank is aimed at funding infrastructure projects in developing nations and will have its headquarters in Shanghai, China. India will preside over its operations for the first five years, to be followed by other members while the board chair will be a Brazilian.

The long-awaited bank is the first major achievement of BRICS countries since they got together in 2009 to press for a bigger say in the global financial order created by Western powers after World War II. The current arrangement focuses only on the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.