brics: BRICS exploring ideas to create fairer payment mechanism to reduce dollar dependence: South Africa

BRICS is exploring ideas to create a fairer payment system that reduces dependence on dollars, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor has said. South Africa is the current BRICS chair.

“We have always been concerned by the fact that there is a dominance of the dollar and that we do need to look at alternative… The systems currently in place tend to privilege very wealthy countries and tend to be really a challenge for countries, such as ourselves, which have to make payments in dollars which costs much more in terms of our various currencies. So I do think a fairer system has to be developed and it’s something we’re discussing with the BRICS ministers in the economic sector discussions,” Pandor told Russian news agency Sputnik.

Pandor said that one of the reasons why BRICS — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — set up the jointly-run New Development Bank (NDB) in 2014 was to find an alternative to the dollar-based payments architecture.

Pandor has also argued that South Africa warned the United States that the bill seeking to counter Russia’s “malign activities” in Africa needs to be removed because they violate international laws.

On the issue of the US unilateral sanctions, Pandor noted that her country pointed out to the US that it wants unilateral American sanctions to be reviewed due to their impact on unrelated countries.

She said South Africa might adhere to sanctions where it feels that international or humanitarian law is infringed, “but where we feel that these are merely unilateral impositions and don’t have the authority of the United Nations, we do not believe that South Africa is bound by them,” she said.