If oil companies refuse to settle in dollars, it will be a severe blow to the American currency, but Russia does not want to use such instruments “in political fights,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said during a plenary session at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF-2021).
“If the oil industry refuses to settle in dollars, it will be a very serious blow to the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. We don’t want to use these tools in some kind of political fuss. We’re not going to do that, ”he said.
“We are thinking about this carefully,” he said.
Putin added that the United States does not value its national currency as an international reserve currency. Thus, according to the head of state, Washington uses the dollar as an instrument of competitive and political struggle, thereby harming it.
“If you look at what is happening – these are not our assessments, these are the assessments of the world bank, other international institutions – the gold and foreign exchange reserves of many countries of the world, including the US allies in dollars, are decreasing, and settlements in dollars are decreasing,” Putin said.
Yesterday, the Russian Ministry of Finance announced that from May 20 of this year, the dollar was excluded from the structure of the National Welfare Fund (NWF). Its share has been reduced from 35 to 0%. It will be replaced by the Chinese yuan and the euro “as the currencies of countries that are Russia’s leading foreign economic partners”, as well as gold as an asset that protects the NWF’s investments from inflationary risks. The Ministry of Finance substantiated this decision with the intention to ensure the safety of the NWF funds “in the context of macroeconomic and geopolitical trends of recent years”, as well as decisions aimed at “de-dollarization” of the Russian economy.
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