Russian officials traveling to Buenos Aires last week brought Putin’s proposal to abandon the dollar in mutual payments and replace it with national currencies – the ruble and the peso, El Cronista reported, citing Argentine sources.
The delegation to which Putin entrusted this order included employees of the Russian Direct Investment Fund and top managers of Sovcombank, the newspaper writes.
They outlined the idea over lunch with President Alberto Fernandez and his aides. Argentine Ambassador Eduardo Zuanin is holding talks in Moscow with diplomats and a businessman, sources said.
But significant progress has not yet been made: technological solutions are needed at the central bank level, and the scale of mutual trade is not large enough to recoup investment.
That’s only $ 900 million a year, and plans to increase it, which Putin negotiated with then-President Christina Kirchner in 2010, have remained on paper. Putin is proposing that Argentina break out of its dependence on the dollar for the second time.
Three years ago, he convinced then-President Mauricio Macri, Kirchner’s husband, of the need to trade national currencies. But now power in Argentina has changed, the risks of Western sanctions have increased, and the process must begin anew.
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