Now about 90 percent of cross-border payments are made in national currencies, but these can create some difficulties for Russians. The leader of the Foreign Economic Activity-Import direction in Tochka, Anna Davydova, told socialbites.ca about this.
First, not all currencies are freely convertible; This means that it can only be changed under certain conditions or restrictions. These are, for example, the Serbian dinar, the Armenian dram or the Arab dirham.
“Rates on limited convertible currencies depend on counterpart banks’ quotes and can be quite high,” Davydova said.
Secondly, some national currencies are unstable, that is, exchange rates periodically fall sharply. Davydova cited the Turkish lira as an example.
While the exchange rate per dollar was around 9.3 lira at the beginning of 2022, it became 8.1 lira at the beginning of 2021. Now the price of “American” is 28.13 lira.
“Third, foreign banks may impose certain restrictions even when dealing with national currencies. Here we are talking about situations when a foreign credit institution unexpectedly refuses to pay. But this is often associated with separate orders of the country’s Central Bank on working with all Russian counterparties,” Davydova concluded.
The shift to using national currencies for payments has become a trend at the regional level, but there are still few economic prerequisites for de-dollarization of the global economy. About this in an interview with socialbites.ca on the eve of the Eastern Economic Forum stated senior banker of the state company VEB.RF, former Deputy Minister of Finance of Russia Sergei Storchak.
Putin before in the name to the expansion of settlements in national currencies in the CIS.