“We do not need a new BRICS currency, we don’t need a new euro, you don’t need something you can buy coffee with. You need what [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin said, in fact, recently — a mechanism regulating trade in bilateral currencies and multilateral currencies [within BRICS and SCO] and also in parallel a unification of payment systems,” Escobar said on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) in Russia’s Vladivostok.
One of the ways to start the process is to initiate the unification of Russia’s payment system, SPFS (System for Transfer of Financial Messages), China’s CIPS (China International Payments System) and the Iranian system, the expert said.
“Then you could have some Central Asians joining, you could try to sell the idea to the Indians. That will be very hard, but they are interested. You could obviously get the Pakistanis inside the SCO, you could present the idea to Turkiye … This is a possibility, and it is very, very practical,” Escobar added.
At the BRICS summit in Johannesburg in late August, leaders adopted a declaration that calls for using local currencies in mutual trade and the “strengthening of correspondent banking networks between the BRICS countries and enabling settlements in the local currencies.”
The 8th EEF is taking place on the campus of the Far Eastern Federal University on September 10-13.