SCO states increasing share of national currencies: Official

The countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) continue to gradually increase the share of national currencies in mutual settlements, Deputy Secretary General of the SCO Grigory Logvinov said.

SCO states increasing share of national currencies: Official

MEHR: The countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) continue to gradually increase the share of national currencies in mutual settlements, Deputy Secretary General of the SCO Grigory Logvinov said.

"This year, the main efforts were focused on continuing to implement the SCO roadmap to gradually increase the share of national currencies in mutual settlements [between countries]," Logvinov said.

He noted that due to the destructive processes taking place in the world, more and more countries are thinking about alternative payment systems and moving away from the dollar payment system that developed in the last century.

Within the SCO format a special expert group was formed to work on this topic, he said. The road map was signed in September 2022. To date, six expert meetings have already taken place, Logvinov noted, TASS reported.

"Specialists are thoroughly analyzing the differences in legislation on currency regulation, identifying limiting factors and possible ways to eliminate them," he noted.

Logvinov recalled that today a significant volume of settlements in Russian-Chinese trade is carried out in national currencies. The experience of bilateral formats will also be useful for multilateral interaction, he noted.

The SCO is an international organization founded in 2001, which includes India, Iran, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. At the SCO summit in New Delhi in June, Belarus signed a memorandum of obligations in order to obtain the status of a member state of the organization. In total, the SCO family, which includes dialogue partners and observers, comprises 26 states.