MOSCOW, Oct 22 — Russia and India have agreed to study the possibility of using national currencies in bilateral trade, Russia’s central bank said in a statement today.
The decision was taken at a meeting of the banking section of the Russia-India inter-governmental commission, it said.
Major banks such as VEB, Sberbank and VTB on the Russian side and State Bank of India, Union Bank of India and Canara Bank on the Indian side took part in the meeting.
Russia’s trade turnover with India stood at only US$3.9 billion (RM13.25 billion) in January-August 2009 compared with US$36.5 billion in trade with China, and even lagged bilateral trade with Brazil at US$4.4 billion.
Brazil, Russia, India and China make up the BRIC informal group of major emerging economies. Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Sobyanin said earlier this week Russia wants to boost its trade with India to US$10 billion in 2010 and to US$20 billion by 2015.
India’s Trade Minister Anand Sharma told Reuters last month in Moscow that Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin may visit India later this year but the Russian government’s press service said it was not aware such visit is planned.
Russia has long called for less global dependence on the dollar, and has reduced the share of the US currency in its US$400 billion reserves to less than 50 per cent.
With China, it has called for discussion on the possibility of creating a new supranational reserve unit, based on the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), although officials admit any such process would take years.
Currently the dollar is the main currency in international trade.
Big oil producing nations denied a British newspaper report earlier this month that Gulf Arab states were in secret talks with Russia, China, Japan and France to replace the dollar with a basket of currencies in trading oil. — Reuters
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