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Possible currency union within Eurasian Economic Union to be considered in future

ASTANA, May 29. /ITAR-TASS/. The issue of creating a currency union on the basis of the Eurasian Economic Union may be considered in the future, Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said on Thursday.

“Sometime in future, we will have to look seriously at creating a financial union, or maybe even a currency union,” he said. “So far, this issue is outside the current agenda.”

The Eurasian Economic Union Treaty was signed by the leaders of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan on Thursday.

In July 2013, Tatiana Valovaya, a board member of the Eurasian Economic Commission on integration and macro-economy, said that the Eurasian Economic Union was not going to be a military bloc or a political union. Neither did it imply the use of common currency, she said. “We are not discussing a political union, military union, any security dimension and a monetary union,” she said. “We are not ready for a common currency and think that there are no political grounds for that. But we are geared towards closer macro-economic and monetary cooperation.”

The draft Eurasian Economic Union Treaty did not envisage the use of a common currency but aimed to increase the share of mutual settlements in Kazakhstan’s tenge, Russia’s and Belarus’ rubles. In 2013, the Russian ruble accounted for 55% of contracts between the three Eurasian Economic Union member countries, while the Belarusian ruble and the Kazakh tenge accounted for a mere 2%.