Single EEU currency to help avoid additional risks – expert says

At a meeting with the presidents of Belarus and Kazakhstan Aleksander Lukashenko and Nursultan Nazarbaev in Astana on March 20, Russia’s Putin said it was time for Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan to start talks on a monetary union. According to Russia’s first deputy minister of economic development Aleksey Likhachev, the monetary union can be created stage by stage, and not all member states need to join it from the beginning. 

Mihranyan said the monetary union will introduce common currency movement rules, which, in turn, will speed up the trade turnover. The ideal option is to have the same rule throughout the EEU, she said. 

Putin instructed to seek a direct exchange mechanism to avoid currency risks tied to exchanging through dollars, she said. This will make the country’s goods cheaper and more competitive in a neighbor’s market, she added. 

The expert stressed the united economic potential is reflected in the single currency; the better is the potential, the stronger is the currency. 

One country’s advantages can compensate for the shortcomings of the other, which will make the single currency more interesting for third countries. 

But for this, the economies should strengthen, and there should be harmonized regulations; any decision will be impossible, if one of the countries oppose it, she said. –0--