Economy Minister Kairat Kelimbetov doesn’t see the Russian rouble in the capacity of the global reserve currency

Minister of Economic Development and Trade Kairat Kelimbetov doesn’t see the Russian rouble in the capacity of the global reserve currency, KazTag reports. “Russia is setting an ambitious goal to turn its national currency into a global reserve currency. However, even the China’s renminbi is not yet fully ready for that. If we talk of some reserve currency in our region, it should be a basket of the China’s renminbi, the Russia’s rouble and the Kazakh tenge. We’d better not politicize the issue”, Minister Kelimbetov said in an interview for Russian Kommersant newspaper August 4. Tengrinews.kz had reported earlier, citing National Bank’s Vice Chairman Bissengali Tadjiyakov, that starting from July 1, 2011 Kazakhstan and China would shift to mutual settlements in their national currencies (tenge and renminbi respectively). According to Mr. Tadjiyakov, the measure is necessary given the robust growth of the bilateral trade turnover: the current figure stands at $20 billion and is set to triple by 2015. When pointing to the necessity of foreign trade-related settlements in national currencies with the neighboring countries, Mr. Marchneko specified mid-May that the US$ accounts for 99% of settlements between Kazakhstan and China. “To be part of the gold and currency assets, renminbi should be acknowledged as freely convertible currency by the IMF. Such a decision could be taken within the following year, then a certain share of the gold and currency assets will be denominated in renminbi”, Mr. Marchenko said at that time. “The situation is similar with regards to the Russian ruble… both renminbi and ruble are growing more demanded to service external trade (…) the gold and currency assets of Kazakhstan won’t be changed, but we will be getting funds in renminbi and ruble”.