Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said in a statement, that it is very important for all the BRICS member states that they develop sustainable financial relations and settlements within the organization.

He made the statement while speaking on Monday at the Russia-China Financial Dialog in Beijing, where he was conducting meetings with Lan Foan, his Chinese counterpart.

The BRICS alliance of developing nations, made up currently of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, has been hashing out ways for member countries to make payments in local currencies. The bloc wants to accelerate its growth by reducing its reliance on the US dollar and the euro.

Siluanov said, “We need to further develop financial cooperation within the BRICS countries. Here we see opportunities … to develop a payments system that would be independent of the infrastructure, which does not always fully fulfill the goals of individual countries.”

He added, “Therefore, the sustainable development of financial relations and settlements on the BRICS platform is important for us, and we believe that it is necessary to work out such issues, and today we will consider a number of them.”

Since Moscow was effectively cut off from the Western financial system by Western sanctions, Russia and its trade partners, including fellow BRICS members, have begun to switch to alternative currencies for mutual trade, as a way of shielding themselves from seeing their economies crushed by Western coalitions due to and future potential geopolitical disputes. As part of this trend, a growing number of countries have turned to using local currencies to settle cross border trade obligations.