The threat of imposing another package of sanctions from the West and possible freezing of dollar accounts make managing boards of the Russian companies look for escape routes. In particular, more and more Russian firms are planning to switch to the yuan. The fact is that the use of Asian countries’ currencies in international settlements is slowly but surely expanding.
“Over the last few weeks there has been a significant interest in the market from large Russian corporations to start using various products in renminbi and other Asian currencies and to set up accounts in Asian locations,” Pavel Teplukhin, the Head of Deutche Bank in Russia said. No doubt, businessmen realize that such a switch is stipulated more by the political reasons than economical ones. Thus, Russia’s authorities fully support this initiative.
“As long as Russia is not subject to systemic sanctions, which could bring an artificial limit to our economy’s access to dollars . . . then I don’t think Russia will take any steps in order to bring about artificial de-dollarisation,” Andrei Belousov, the economic adviser to Vladimir Putin stated. It seems that China is the only one so far which benefits from the current situation. The thing is that China keeps promoting its national currency as a new reserve currency. Some experts are of the opinion that these dreams might come true before the renminbi becomes a fully convertible currency.
The state-owned corporations also want to join the commercial organizations so that they are ready to consider such a possibility too. According to Alexander Djukov, the current Gazprom Neft Chairman, the company has already discussed this issue with their clients. In the meantime, Norilsk Nickel has carried out the negotiations over switching the long-term contracts signed with the Chinese consumers in renminbi.