EAEU countries to create Eurasian digital commodity exchange for Silk Road
"The process meant to couple the Silk Road initiative with the Eurasian Economic Union is getting faster. New opportunities for a synergy between these large-scale projects are emerging. There is no doubt that support of financial structures and associations will contribute to advancement on the way towards economic development of all the EAEU member states," said Timur Zhaksylykov, Member of the Board (Minister) for Economy and Financial Policy of the Eurasian Economic Commission, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Financial & Banking Association of Euro-Asian Cooperation, during the latest session of the Supervisory Board.
According to Alexei Smolyakov, head of the representative office of the Financial & Banking Association of Euro-Asian Cooperation in Kazakhstan, the Universal Commodity Exchange Eurasian Cooperation combines exchange trade with mutual clearing payments in a multicurrency mode. With Russian and Kazakh banks using the system, exchange deals are now processed without interruptions. Alexei Smolyakov said that a wide network of outlets of the Universal Commodity Exchange Eurasian Cooperation is being created and settlement accounts are being opened for trading participants. They can now pay for contracts using their national currencies while the exchange takes care of transboundary payments and currency conversion. Apart from extending the list of currencies and expanding the outlet network the Universal Commodity Exchange Eurasian Cooperation is supposed to create instruments for risk hedging. Alexei Smolyakov remarked that all the Eurasian market participants are interested in the creation of a universal digital exchange platform.
The volume of trade handled by the Universal Commodity Exchange Eurasian Cooperation has increased noticeably recently. In 2016 the volume of deals between commercial entities of the Eurasian Economic Union member states was only RUB4 billion. In January-May 2017 the volume reached RUB6 billion.
Deals between commercial entities of Russia and Kazakhstan represent the majority. Participants of the session decided to continue working on the state registration of legal persons, which can function as central counterparties, in Armenia, Belarus, and Kyrgyzstan for the sake of facilitating access of small and medium businesses of these countries to the Universal Commodity Exchange Eurasian Cooperation. The measures are supposed to increase trade volume and the list of commodities traded, Kazinform has learned from BelTA .