© Reuters. Leaders of the BRICS nations, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, are pictured as they arrive for the BRICS summit in Brasilia, Brazil, on November 14, 2019. (Reuters)/Osley Marcelino/File Photo
Written by Rachel Savage and Karen Du Plessis
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – The BRICS currency will not be on the agenda for the bloc’s summit in South Africa next month, but Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa will continue to steer clear of the US dollar, a senior South African diplomat said on Thursday.
“There was never talk of a BRICS currency, it’s not on the agenda,” Anil Soklal, South Africa’s Ambassador-at-Large: Asia and BRICS, said at a briefing.
“What we have said and continue to deepen is trading in local currencies and settlement in local currencies,” he added.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are among BRICS leaders who have promoted the idea of a single currency as the bloc aims to challenge Western dominance of global finance amid Russia-imposed exile after last year’s invasion of Ukraine.
This has prompted countries to find alternatives to the dollar, especially among allies outside the United States.
However, India’s foreign minister said earlier this month that currencies will remain “a very much a national issue for a long time to come,” while South Africa’s central bank governor noted that a single currency requires banking union, fiscal union and macroeconomic convergence.
“The BRICS group started a process that was accelerated as a result of the conflict as a result of the unilateral sanctions,” Soklal said. “The days of a dollar-centric world are over, that’s a fact. We have a multipolar global trading system today.”
(This story has been corrected to say Thursday, not Wednesday, in paragraph 1)