The BRICS nations have discussed the possibility of creating a multilateral digital settlement and payments platform at the finance ministers and central bank governors' meeting in Sao Paulo this week, according to a statement from the Russian Finance Ministry on Wednesday.
"By the end of the year, the Ministry of Finance of Russia and the Bank of Russia, together with their unification partners, will prepare a report to the leaders of the BRICS countries on improving the international monetary and financial system, which will contain a list of initiatives and recommendations," the statement said.
It underscored that the result of the report would the "launch of a number of practical initiatives", one of which could be the "BRICS Bridge Platform".
"We are talking about creating a multilateral digital settlement and payment platform. It will help bring the financial markets of the BRICS member countries closer together and increase mutual trade turnover," the Russian finance ministry said.
The BRICS meeting was the first face-to-face engagements of top finance officials from the BRICS grouping after its expansion involving Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Western Financial Instruments Being Used to Create Political and Economic Pressure, Russia Says
Addressing the BRICS' meeting in the Brazilian city, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov stated that the current international financial system based on western financial infrastructure had a number of "fundamental flaws" and was "increasingly being used as an instrument of political and economic pressure".
"The need to reform the international monetary and financial system is also due to geo-economic fragmentation, which arose as a result of the vicious practice of introducing trade and financial restrictions," Siluanov said, adding that there was a need to create an "independent financial infrastructure to strengthen the autonomy and financial sovereignty of developing countries".
The finance minister said that the proposed financial infrastructure should be "accessible to everyone", regardless of the will of individual nations.
"Otherwise, we face artificially created barriers to trade, investment and technology, even in transactions between third countries. This leads to a slowdown in global economic growth," Siluanov cautioned.
The finance minister outlined the improving the mechanism of functioning of the pool of conditional foreign exchange reserves, increased interactions of domestic payments' systems and increasing the share of national currencies in trade settlements in the grouping among others as priorities for Russia in the BRICS financial track.