The Russian Federation government is active in gradual refusal of using the US dollar in international payments with other countries. Such agreements have been already reached with the Chinese authorities, who are also trying to increase the share of the national currency. Vietnam could become the next. The Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev supported the view that the effectiveness of business relationship between two countries would increase significantly if replacing the US dollars with rubles and dongs. Currently, all essential conditions are provided. It is planned to start using the national currencies in trade and investment sectors. "Firstly, there are no obstacles for making settlements in rubles and dongs. None from the legal point of view. But we need an economic reason for this,” Dmitry Medvedev noted in the interview. During his trip to Vietnam in early April, the Russian politician visited Hanoi. In this case, this proposal is not a new one. The possibility of using national currencies for mutual settlements was agreed on nearly ten years ago, when a Russian-Vietnamese bank had been created. However, even the establishment of a joint financial institution has failed to increase transactions in the local currencies substantially. According to available data, settlements in rubles and dongs only account for about 1.5 percent of total transaction volume, with all the other settlements made in the US dollars. That is why the Russian Prime Minister stressed the necessity of increasing the turnover as a whole. “But using national currencies is advantageous when a trade volume is high enough and when there is a need to accumulate reserves in the Russian currency (in rubles) or in the Vietnamese currency (in dongs). The US dollar is a foreign currency in Russia as well as in Vietnam. We need to buy the US dollars for subsequent settlements, making us heavily dependent on the exchange rate. In this sense, it could be more profitable to make mutual settlements in our national currencies, namely for trade and investments," said Dmitry Medvedev.
