ST. PETERSBURG, June 19. /TASS/. The Eurasian Economic Union, the BRICS grouping of the world’s five leading emerging economies and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization should pool their efforts to create an alternative to the International Monetary Fund, Ukrainian former Prime Minister Sergey Arbuzov said on Friday.
"The IMF monopoly has exhausted itself and time for an alternative has come," Arbuzov said in an interview with TASS news agency.
"An organization that could play this role can be established within two years. Ukraine was expected to become the venue for its start but now this is impossible and therefore I propose that the Eurasian Economic Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS should implement our idea," Arbuzov told TASS.
A structure alternative to the IMF could set up a fund and accept member countries’ contributions not only in money, gold and securities, "the liquidity of which is questioned," but also expand the list of contributions, the Ukrainian ex-premier told TASS.
"This could be oil and gas for Russia, grain for Ukraine, agricultural produce for Brazil and technologies for China," Arbuzov said.
This does not mean a pile-up in inventories but relates to reserving a certain share of traded goods without stopping their free movement on the market to have a possibility to re-channel them to the countries applying for support, the Ukrainian ex-premier said.
The countries of the BRICS grouping and the Eurasian Economic Community "have joint development banks that are largely aimed at infrastructure projects. I propose an international system of insurance in problem situations for countries," Arbuzov said.