Russia ready to counter ‘excessive domination’ of certain reserve currencies – Putin

“We will also work towards a more balanced distribution of quotas and voting shares within the IMF and the World Bank,” Putin said

MOSCOW, September 1. /TASS/. Russia is ready to join forces with its partners to counter excessive domination’ of the limited number of reserve currencies, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his article in the run-up of the BRICS summit published on Friday.

“We are ready to work together with our partners to promote international financial regulation reforms and to overcome the excessive domination of the limited number of reserve currencies. We will also work towards a more balanced distribution of quotas and voting shares within the IMF and the World Bank,” Putin said in his article, headlined “BRICS: Towards New Horizons of Strategic Partnership,” to be published by the leading media of the BRICS states (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) ahead of the group’s summit due on September 3-5 in China.

Unfairness of global financial architecture

According to the Russian leader, Russia shares the BRICS countries’ concerns over the unfairness of the global financial and economic architecture, which does not give due regard to the growing weight of the emerging economies.

“I am confident that the BRICS countries will continue to act in a consolidated manner against protectionism and new barriers in global trade,” he said. “We value the BRICS countries’ consensus on this issue, which allows us to more consistently advocate the foundations of an open, equal and mutually beneficial multilateral trade system and to strengthen the role of the WTO as the key regulator in international trade.”

The president said that Russia’s initiative on the development of cooperation among the BRICS countries’ antimonopoly agencies is aimed at creating effective mechanisms to encourage healthy competition.

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“The goal is to create a package of cooperation measures to work against the restrictive business practices of large multinational corporations and trans-border violations of competition rules,” he said.

Role of New Development Bank

The Russian leader said that a BRICS Strategy for Economic Partnership, which is currently being successfully implemented, was adopted at the summit in the Russian city of Ufa in 2015.

“We hope to be able to discuss new large-scale cooperation tasks in trade and investment and industrial cooperation at the Xiamen Summit,” Putin said.

He added that Russia is interested in promoting economic cooperation within the BRICS format.

“Considerable practical achievements have been recently reported in this area, primarily the launch of the New Development Bank (NDB). It has approved seven investment projects in the BRICS countries worth around $1.5 billion,” Putin said.

“This year, the NDB is to approve a second package of investment projects worth $2.5-$3 billion in total,” the Russian leader continued. “I am convinced that their implementation will not only be a boost to our economies but will also promote integration between our countries.”.