No obstacles for Moscow and Hanoi to make settlements in national currencies — Russian PM

MOSCOW, April 3. /TASS/. Russia and Vietnam can easily switch to their national currencies – the Russian ruble and the Vietnamese dong – in mutual settlements, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview with the Vietnamese media ahead of his visit to that country.

“First, there are no obstacles to making settlements in rubles and dongs. None from the legal point of view,” he said. “But we need an economic reason for this.”

He said the two countries had agreed about possible use of their national currencies in mutual settlements about a decade ago and had even established a special bank for that. “But using national currencies is only suitable when the volume of mutual trade is high and you need to accumulate resources in rubles or dongs,” the Russian prime minister noted. “So far, these settlements only account for about 1.5 percent of trade, with all the other settlements made in US dollars, which is not always advantageous.”

“In this sense, it could be more profitable to make mutual settlements in our national currencies, namely in trade and investment,” Medvedev said. “I think there is a good opportunity to do this also in relations with Vietnam. I will definitely raise this issue at the upcoming talks with my Vietnamese partners.”