Brazil is obstructing any creation of an independent payments system among the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), the editor of Brazil’s business daily Monitor Mercantil, Marcos De Oliveira, charged on April 14, in response to statements made that day by the Secretary of International Economic Affairs of Brazil’s Economics Ministry Erivaldo Alfredo Gomes reported by Agencia Brasil.
At the April 8 meeting of the BRICS Finance Ministers, Russia’s Anton Siluanov proposed that, in light of Western economic sanctions, the BRICS create their own international payment system, financial messaging system and independent rating agency and increase the use of national currencies for export-import transactions. Reform of the current international financial system “should be aimed at ensuring the independence and continuity of economic processes,” Siluanov told the meeting, according to Eurasia Business News.
Brazil’s Economics Secretary Gomes rejected Siluanov’s proposal on April 14, telling reporters that “this is not a working topic, it is not on Brazil’s agenda…. It makes sense for people to discuss how to establish a new [international payments] platform,” he claimed, but with a big caveat: “Brazil understands that this should occur in a multilateral, global framework. Not a specific solution for some countries.” As for what kind of new platform the Economics Ministry contemplates, Gomes ignored the central question of sanctions, speaking only of the need to make the SWIFT system more agile, so that transactions would clear in one day—and proposing that the Bank for International Settlements manage the “new” system!
The Brazilian government is being “ingenuous,” De Oliveira observed. “The United States, which controls the current system along with other international financial centers, will not relinquish control. The sanctions imposed on Iran, Venezuela, and now on Russia, make this very clear.” The purpose of Russia’s proposal is precisely to allow the BRICS countries to escape this American control, he wrote.
