BRICS members should strengthen cooperation on cross-border payment, study local currency cooperation payment tools and platforms and promote local currency settlement, said Li Kexin, an official from China’s Foreign Ministry.
The leaders of BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – agreed at the summit in Johannesburg to encourage more local currency usage in trade and financial transactions, as they seek to shift away from dependence on the US dollar.
Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier on Thursday that the BRICS bloc planned to set up an alternative international payments system to SWIFT.
Indian Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra told a separate press briefing that an alternative payment system was “an area of promise”.