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De-dollarisation: BRICS Single Currency Sets to Shatter Dollar's Dominance

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has repeatedly proposed introducing an alternative currency to the US dollar in BRICS member nations. The leader intends to raise this issue at the upcoming BRICS summit in South Africa in September.
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The proposed BRICS single currency can effectively deal with the risks of exchange rate fluctuations in mutual trade and reduce the association's dependence on the US dollar, experts told Sputnik.

"The currency will be supranational, it will afford countries not to abandon their national currency, as was the case with the euro. Also, the creation of a single currency for the BRICS countries will avoid the risks of a sharp change in the exchange rate in trade calculations, since the currencies of developing countries themselves are highly volatile," Evgeny Kalyanov, an expert on the stock market of BCS World of Investments, said.

The expert explained that the single currency would make converting through the dollar in trade settlements unnecessary.

"There is a tendency that the [US] dollar is used less and less in international settlements. But if many people agree that it is necessary to gradually abandon the dollar, then there is still no consensus on alternatives even within the BRICS," said Sergey Trostyansky, deputy director of the NTI Competence Center of Moscow State University.

He emphasized that any such decisions should take into account the political interests of the member countries, and within BRICS India, for example, advocate the use of its national currency, the rupee, in calculations.

"With the expanding of BRICS, the task will become even more complicated, from a political point of view. But if a consensus is reached and any unit of account is adopted, then this will definitely simplify the calculations between the countries," the expert concluded. ​

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