India has never been in favour of de-dollarisation and there is currently no proposal for a BRICS currency, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Saturday.
He made the remark a week after United States President-elect Donald Trump threatened 100% tariffs on the BRICS bloc and its allies unless they abandon efforts to reduce reliance on the US dollar in international trade.
The BRICS group, initially comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, has expanded to include Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Egypt and Ethiopia.
Jaishankar, addressing the Doha Forum in the Qatari capital, said on Saturday that he was not sure what the trigger for Trump’s remark was. “But we’ve always said that India has never been for de-dollarisation,” he said.
The foreign minister said that all BRICS members do not share the same position on the matter. “But where India is concerned, the United States is our largest trade partner,” he said. “We have no interest in weakening the dollar at all.”
Jaishankar said that India had “a very solid relationship” with the first Trump administration from 2017 to 2021, but acknowledged that there were “some issues” that were mostly related to trade.
“But there were a whole lot of issues on which Trump was very international, he was very forward-leaning,” the external affairs minister said.
On December 1, Trump posted on X: “The idea that the BRICS Countries are trying to move away from the Dollar while we stand by and watch is OVER.” He demanded that members of the grouping commit that they would neither create a new BRICS currency, nor back any other currency to replace the United States dollar.
Russia and China, both members of the BRICS grouping, have in recent months led calls for a new reserve currency. A BRICS currency proposal was discussed at last year’s summit in South Africa and the October summit in Russia’s Kazan, reported the Associated Press.
At the October BRICS summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin criticised Western nations for “weaponising” the dollar through sanctions, which he said “undermine trust in this currency and diminish its powers”.
“It’s not us who refuse to use the dollar…We are forced to search for alternatives,” Putin added.
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