Single Brics currency not on agenda, says Russia's deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov

New Delhi: A single Brics currency is not on the agenda but the group is keen to expand the use of national currencies for settlements, clearances, reinsurance, investments and infrastructure development, Russia's Brics sherpa and deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov has said. "Let me be very clear, we are not talking about establishing any common single currency. We are not ready for it. And actually, it's not something that we look into as a practical matter," Ryabkov told ET. "What we need to do is a further expansion of use of national currencies." Also, this should be immune from sanctions and all other coercive measures, he said.

"This is not an attempt to undermine the dollar," he added. "President Putin said several times that if Russia would not have been deprived of use of dollars, we will still be with dollars." Russia is under sanctions with most of its major banks cut off from the SWIFT system. "Brics is not an anti-western alliance," Ryabkov said. "But in cases where multilateralism is attacked, the international system is destroyed, treaties disappear one after another... All this should be responded to...in the form of more cohesion and more focus on how Brics would avail itself."