Brazilian and German development banks agree blockchain partnership

The Brazilian Economic and Social Development Bank (BNDES) and Germany's development bank KfW have approved a memorandum of understanding around the improvement of blockchain software TruBudget.

see also

Yes, Blockchain could reverse the course of civilization and upend the world's most powerful companies

Businesses often win by centralizing resources and extracting value, and today's governments and financial systems empower them to do it. Blockchain changes the equation.

Read now

The software developed by KfW is aimed at improving transparency and efficiency in public resources that finance development projects. It uses a distributed ledger to provide access to records of budgetary spending on schools and hospitals from the point of payment to subsequent transactions including procurement, contracting and implementation of a project.

Under the partnership, KfW will offer BNDES access to its software repository and will manage all the other tools required to work on the improvement of TruBudget, as well as technical support to the Brazilian bank.

"The bank will not use [TruBudget] for commercial purposes nor will it claim intellectual property for the software or for its improved version," BNDES said in a statement.

"During the joint execution of the project, KfW intends to formalize TruBudget's license on a open source basis," The statement added.

Before May, BNDES intends to do a pilot of TruBudget on the Amazon Fund, which makes non-reimbursable financial operations and has KfW as one of its donors.