South Africa's leading commercial Bank Standard Bank Group on Friday said that the BRICS Development Bank, once established, will "contribute constructively" to the development of the BRICS group.

The feasibility of establishing a BRICS bank will be an agenda item prominent in the upcoming fifth BRICS summit scheduled for March 26-27 in Durban, South Africa.

In a financial report released in Johannesburg, the bank said that it views the proposed bank as an attempt to give an institutional underpinning to the grouping, with the "main ambition of directing development in a manner that reflects the BRICS priorities and competencies."

BRICS is an acronym for the world's emerging economies, namely Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

"Standard Bank Group believes that the proposed institution would contribute constructively to the development of more robust and inter-dependant ties between the BRICS," said Jeremy Stevens, Standard Bank Group's Beijing-based economist, who is also one of the authors of the report.

The envisioned bank is expected to focus on financing infrastructure development projects and providing auxiliary support for project preparation such as feasibility studies.

According to the report, Standard Bank expects the BRICS to establish a working group at the summit to give effect to the notion of a BRICS bank, and expects the summit to yield a relatively concrete outcome pertaining to the "objective, structure and governance of the bank, which would ultimately allow for its formal establishment."

The proposed BRICS bank is expected to operate as a conduit for funding economic development, much like the World Bank.

"We believe the bank will focus on financing projects linked to intra-BRICS bilateral multipliers and shared interests such as job creation and urbanization, with a particular emphasis on physical infrastructure projects," Stevens said.

"However, the BRICS bank is not a counterweight to multilateral development banks, notably the World Bank, but is an auxiliary funding institution, albeit more aligned to BRICS development agenda," he added.

Stevens believe that the success of a BRICS bank will depend on its specialization, rather than creating overlapping agendas with other development financing institutions and BRICS' state policy banks, including Brazil Development Bank, China Development Bank and Export-Import Bank of India.

"A host of pragmatic issues require resolution, including the funding source, ideal borrower, types of projects, geographical reach, bank headquarters and many others," Stevens said.

It has been proposed that each of the five member states would initially contribute 10 billion U.S. dollars in seed capital to the BRICS bank.

And the bank would then aim to borrow from global capital markets by issuing bonds, thus becoming a non-resident borrower in the United States, Europe, Hong Kong and elsewhere.