The South African Deputy President Paul Mashatile has revealed that the leaders of the BRICS nations will focus on ways to reduce dependence on the dollar when they meet this week.
The BRICS bloc which include Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, will also be discussing expansion at the summit in Johannesburg. A big group will be representing about half of global output by 2040, Bloomberg Economics estimates show, double the share of the Group of Seven, a reversal from the turn of this century.
The bloc is expecting their growing heft to help reduce dependence on the greenback. Leaders will look at ways to boost payments in members’ currencies, part of a wider ambition to challenge the geopolitical leadership of the US. Longer term, one idea is to launch a common currency to challenge the dollar.
Telling business leaders from the BRICS late on Monday, Mashatile said: “Today the world takes notice of this bloc because it’s at the forefront of the global discourse,” to reduce dependence on the dollar. He added by saying: “We are not here to compete with the West. We want our space in global business.”
Back in June, BNP Paribas SA said in a note that conditions were ripe for the dollar’s dominance in global trade to diminish, even if the process was “a slow, incremental burn.”
Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said to the gathering to loud cheers from the audience: “I want to buy from India. Why should I use dollars? It’s a payment and settlement system that will allow me to buy whatever I want to buy in India, whatever I want to buy in Brazil, without looking for dollars.”
Until today, deep divisions among members have limited the consensus-driven bloc’s ability to increase its sway at institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank or the United Nations Security Council.
A BRICS development bank has lent only $32.8 billion in eight years in operation, a tiny fraction of the amount the IMF and World Bank have disbursed over the period.
