JOHANNESBURG, Aug 15 Reuters The development bank founded by the socalled BRICS countries closed the auction for its first South African rand bonds on Tuesday, as it comes under pressure to boost its local currency fundraising and lending.

The New Development Bank39;s NDB two bonds, a 1 billion rand 52.3 million fiveyear note and a 500 million rand threeyear note, attracted 2.67 billion rand of bids in total, according to auction results shared by two investors with Reuters.

South Africa39;s finance minister said that the NDB, which was founded to give the BRICS members Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa more control of development financing, was not doing enough local currency lending, in an interview with Reuters ahead of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg next week.

The NDB did not respond to a request for comment on the bond auction.

Chief Financial Officer Leslie Maasdorp told Reuters in a recent interview that the bank aims to increase local currency lending, most of which has so far been in the Chinese yuan, from about 22 to 30 by 2026, but that there were limits to dedollarisation.

The South African bond market has struggled in recent years to attract new issuers to match growing demand from domestic investors looking for quality credit assets.

NDB39;s threeyear rand bond was priced at a floating rate of 95 basis points bps above the threemonth Johannesburg Interbank Average Rate Jibar, while the five year was priced at Jibar 105 bps.

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