Russia calls on BRICS to ditch dollar in members mutual trade

By Rhod Mackenzie

The Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov emphasized the importance of sustainable financial relations and settlements within the BRICS organization for all member states during the Russia-China Financial Dialogue forum in Beijing on Monday.

Siluanov met with his Chinese counterpart, Lan Foan.

The BRICS group of emerging economies, currently comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, has been discussing ways to facilitate payments in local currencies between member countries. The bloc aims to reduce its reliance on the US dollar and the euro to accelerate growth.

'We need to further develop financial cooperation within the BRICS countries.' Siluanov stated that there are opportunities to develop a payments system that would be independent of the infrastructure, which does not always fully fulfill the goals of individual countries.

Therefore, the sustainable development of financial relations and settlements on the BRICS platform is important. It is necessary to work out such issues, and today we will consider a number of them.

Russia and its trade partners among developing nations, including fellow BRICS members, have begun to use alternative currencies in mutual trade due to sanctions that have effectively cut Moscow off from the Western financial system. An increasing number of nations are turning to national currency settlements in trade.