BRICS eyes settlements in national currencies

Most countries at a meeting of BRICS finance ministers and central bank governors supported the departure from the dollar, agreeing that settlements in national currencies are what the countries in the bloc need, Russian Deputy Finance Minister Ivan Chebeskov told Sputnik.

The BRICS finance ministers and central bank heads met in Sao Paulo on February 27.

"Most countries have said that settlement in national currencies is what the BRICS countries need. We are already a big BRICS family of 10 countries. Most countries supported the fact that it is necessary to build new mechanisms of settlements and shared the experience of developing digital currencies by central banks, the experience of building platforms, and participation in trials of various platforms," Chebeskov said.

"That is, generally, we received a pretty good response that within BRICS, in order to increase trade turnover and to strengthen economic ties, we of course need independent settlement mechanisms in national currencies. It seemed to me that the majority of participants supported these ideas," the Deputy Minister added.

Additionally, Chebeskov reiterated that the Russian Finance Ministry favors the creation of a unified digital platform, a kind of technological gateway for the possible unification of both digital currencies from central banks and national systems of financial messaging.

"Technologies now make it possible to create software to which any bank from the BRICS countries can connect and, in fact, work through this gateway, through this platform, to make settlements without having corresponding relations with a huge number of banks from other countries," Chebeskov said.

"We propose to simplify in this way interactions between banks and create independent channels for payments and the transmission of financial messages," he clarified.

Chebeskov noted that it is still difficult to assess to what degree BRICS countries are technologically and institutionally ready to join such a platform.

"While the conversation was at a conceptual level, we see that their goals are close to ours; they see that it is necessary to move towards this. The question of how quickly they will be ready for the practical implementation of this mechanism is, of course, difficult to answer at this stage. My colleagues and I will work on this issue both within the frameworks of multilateral cooperation and bilateral cooperation," the deputy minister added.

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