Exclusive | Russia, China keen to increase use of yuan, rouble in trade settlement, ambassador Andrey Denisov says
- Bilateral trade rose 25 per cent last year to US$108 billion but only a fraction of it was settled in the nations’ own currencies
- Countries are ‘dissatisfied that almost everything in international payments is based on American dollars’, envoy says
Russia and China are keen to increase the use of the rouble and yuan in bilateral trade settlements to reduce their reliance on the US dollar, Russia’s ambassador to China said.
Trade between the two countries in 2018 rose 25 per cent year on year to US$108 billion, but only about 10 to 12 per cent of it was conducted in their own currencies, with the yuan accounting for more than half of the total. Both Moscow and Beijing wanted to increase that percentage significantly, envoy Andrey Denisov said in an interview.
“Both China and Russia are dissatisfied that almost everything in international payments is based on American dollars. We need more self-sufficiency. We need more autonomy,” he said.
“When I say ‘we’, I mean not only Russia and China, but a wide range of economies. We don’t want to suffer from the prevailing use of just one currency.”
China is Russia’s largest trading partner, while Russia is China’s 10th largest. Trade between the two was strong, Denisov said.
