The Right To Know – The NDB’s Information Disclosure Policy in a Comparative Context

The world’s youngest development finance institution (DFI), steered by the BRICS nations, released its information disclosure policy in June 2017. The core document is important in that establishes the Bank’s policy on transparency, accountability and inclusive participation. The policy was developed, however, without any civil society or public inputs.

This discussion paper scrutinizes the NDB’s information disclosure policy against the existing practices of four other established DFIs, namely the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank and Inter-American Development Bank and evolves recommendations to help the Bank align itself to global standards for access to information. The paper is intended to be a civil society contribution for the NDB to consider ahead of its scheduled review of the existing information disclosure policy in mid-2018.