- As the 15th BRICS summit gets underway in Johannesburg, South Africa today, the prospect of a common currency for the bloc continues to generate interest both inside and outside the bloc, even as key voices attempt to redirect the conversation towards trade and bond issuances in local currencies.
But other BRICS members are resisting the common currency narrative. On Monday, Indian Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra delivered a special briefing to the media in which he downplayed the prospect of the BRICS countries developing a common currency to rival the U.S. dollar. The ambassador added, however, that the bloc's member countries will continue to move away from the U.S. dollar, and that Western sanctions against Russia imposed after the Ukraine invasion are accelerating the transition.
"It is in this direction that the initiatives that have been voiced recently ... about the need to think about creating our own currencies within the framework of BRICS.”The BRICS’ answer to the IMF and the World Bank, the New Development Bank , is currently led by former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, who came from the same party as Lula and is believed to share his vision of economics and the global order.