Russian President Putin told his Indian interviewers from India Today that he was focused on new centers of growth in the world.
“New centers of growth are emerging of rapid, strong growth. These include countries of the Global South, notably South Asia, India, and Indonesia, which has nearly 300 million people and is rising quickly. Of course, it’s not one and a half billion people living there, like in India, but still these are very rapidly developing countries. Let me say it again: Africa is already advancing swiftly and will accelerate even more. With its young population, these countries would be our future. They’ll strive toward higher living standards, which is inevitable.”
Putin was asked “Are we looking at alternative payment systems? Is there going to be a BRICS currency? Or are we looking at alternative payments in terms of national currencies, rupee or ruble? Moving towards de-dollarization basically.”
Putin responded: “You know, there’s no rush in this, festina lente and you’ll avoid big mistakes. Right now we don’t aim at having a single currency within BRICS. In this process, there’s no rush anywhere, and we aren’t rushing either. There is a need to expand the use of national currencies, you’ve mentioned this already. We must make better use of the BRICS New Development Bank’s opportunities.
For example, we propose creating a new investment platform using electronic payments (with an initial capital of 100 billion dollars) to encourage joint investments both in our economies and those of developing nations in the Global South. I believe this could be very appealing option, because these investments would help us…
“There will be more and more tools like this. Modern payment systems and digital money exist already and they are evolving rapidly. And for us, this is definitely not about working against anyone—we see it more as refining tools that are already widely used worldwide.”
