DUSHANBE, January 26, 2015, Asia-Plus – Iran has reportedly refused to use the U.S. dollars in foreign trade transactions.
Iranian Tasnim News Agency on January 24 quoted Mr. Gholamali Kamyab, the deputy head of the Central bank of Iran (CBI), as saying that Iran no more uses US dollar in monetary transactions with foreign countries.
Gholamali Kamyab reportedly said that Iran does not employ the US dollar in trade with any country anymore, saying other currencies have been replaced in transactions.
“In trade exchanges with the foreign countries, Iran uses other currencies, including Chinese yuan, euro, Turkish lira, Russian ruble and South Korean won,” Kamyab said.
He also added that Iran is considering bilateral currency swap agreements with a number of countries, saying negotiations for signing such agreements will begin soon.
Bilateral currency swap agreements are to ease trade and economic transactions, Kamyab noted.
In early 2014, Justin Yifu Lin, the former World Bank Chief Economist, blamed the dominance of the US dollar for global economic crises and said it should be eliminated as the world’s reserve currency. According to Lin, the solution would be to replace the national currency with a global currency.
“The dominance of the greenback is the root cause of global financial and economic crises,” Justin Yifu Lin told Bruegel, a Brussels-based policy-research think tank. “The solution to this is to replace the national currency with a global currency.”
Several countries have been avoiding the US dollar in foreign trade, including Russia, China, India and Turkey, often paying for products in gold or other agreed on currencies.
