Alexander Vedyakhin: We need to create our own currency market

Alexander Vedyakhin, First Deputy Chairman of the Board of Sberbank, at the Eastern Economic Forum “Great Eurasian Partnership: Pathways to Economic Development” session, announced the need to finally move away from settlements through SWIFT using alternatives – SPFS, Sber FinLine and others.

He added that one of the main challenges today is how to trade with friendly countries in national currencies, including the ruble. Until now, despite the new geopolitical realities, contract prices are in dollars and euros, even with consensus in national currencies. This situation causes financial losses for both parties during the transformation.

“We need to create our own foreign exchange market. We have bilateral agreements, but barter trading is more profitable and interesting, we should not be dependent on a single buyer. There is an exchange for that, and that exchange should have futures, futures, and derivatives. Let’s set up a commodity exchange in the Far East to work with the countries of the Asia-Pacific region and all the surrounding countries. We have a very good experience with the St. Petersburg Commodity Exchange, we discussed this idea with them. Let’s make a platform where it will be possible to trade and where there will be all the relevant tools, and then trading will reach a completely different level,” he said.

In his view, it is equally important to provide lending conditions and mutual guarantees to partner countries. Now the problem often lies in the fact that friendly countries are ready to buy goods from Russia in rubles, but do not have enough rubles due to the trade imbalance: they buy a lot from us, and we buy some from them. Sberbank is ready to provide friendly countries with rubles for the purchase of domestic goods, but there is a need for guarantees that EXIAR can help.

“Let’s make these financial instruments familiar to us in national currencies and rubles – and then there will be no need for the platforms from which we left and currencies that are no longer of the same interest. The cross rate for any national currency-ruble pair is now the dollar-euro. We need to move away from this: for example, there should be a platform for direct trading pairs on the basis of the Moscow Exchange. And all this is not super complex tasks – it can be done in 6-9 months. And this will increase trade with countries in the Eurasian partnership by one and a half to two times – only because of the availability of good, high-quality, modern financial instruments, ”said Vedyakhin.

The VII Eastern Economic Forum is an important international platform for creating and strengthening ties between the Russian and global investment community, a comprehensive expert assessment of the economic potential of the Russian Far East, investment opportunities and business conditions in priority development areas.