Russia’s Medvedev calls for unified rules in global economy

ZHENGZHOU, China, Dec 15 (PRIME) -- Russia is not against international partnerships and associations, but amid decreased international trade and higher currency volatility there is a need for common rules in the economic sphere, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday at a meeting of the Council of Heads of Government of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

“Serious economic challenges remain, indicators of international trade and investment activity continue falling, the volatility of currencies is increased, and of many currencies along with very sharp fluctuations of global prices for energy and raw resources,” Medvedev said.

The situation in the global economy becomes more and more complicated due to attempts to undermine the international trade relations’ architecture and to create all kinds of exclusive partnerships, he said.

“I would like to directly emphasize that our country is not against such partnerships as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other associations, but we would like to understand what will be happening to global trade, what the fate of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which we all joined, will be and where the universal settlement rules exist. It is extremely important for us to live in a predictable world, for united rules of behavior in the economic sphere to exist,” Medvedev said.

He said the priority task was to create a financial mechanism of the SCO.

“For efficient financial support, including preferential loans, creation of the SCO financial mechanism is a priority task,” he said.

“The expansion of the SCO’s trade relations would much contribute to increasing the share of national currencies. We are dealing with it. We have launched a pilot project on the Moscow Exchange, a pilot platform to trade currency pairs of ruble-yuan and ruble-tenge without the participation of the dollar, without the dollar’s intermediation, and we invite all to join such initiatives,” Medvedev said.

Russia proposes to start consultations of the Eurasian Economic Union and the SCO with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on creating possible partnerships, Medvedev also said.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has proposed to develop certain measures to create a free-trade zone at the SCO.

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