At the Nov. 7 Valdai Discussion Club annual meeting in Sochi, Russian President Vladimir Putin elaborated on his proposal for a BRICS “Investment Platform,” the intriguing idea that he first floated at the Kazan BRICS summit on Oct. 24. According to the Kremlin site, Putin answered a question posed by Brazilian economist Paulo Nogueira Batista, Jr. about “constructing alternatives to the unreliable and dysfunctional dollar system” and a possible “new reserve currency.”
Putin began by noting that “my position is based on the recommendations of our experts, and I have complete trust in them. They are undoubtedly world-class professionals.… Once I have a clear understanding of the discussion, I present these ideas to our partners. I presented one of these ideas to [Brazilian] President Lula, and he expressed interest.… We adopted a similar approach with other BRICS countries. I had productive discussions with nearly all the leaders, and in general, everyone found these ideas appealing.”
Putin then explained the proposal, which is to create a mechanism for generating credit and channeling it into productive investments in developing sector nations—although the details of how that would happen are not totally clear:
