BEIJING, December 12. /TASS/. The countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) continue to gradually increase the share of national currencies in mutual settlements, Deputy Secretary General of the SCO Grigory Logvinov said at a meeting with the organization’s press club.

"This year, the main efforts were focused on continuing to implement the SCO roadmap to gradually increase the share of national currencies in mutual settlements [between countries]," Logvinov said.

He noted that due to the destructive processes taking place in the world, more and more countries are thinking about alternative payment systems and moving away from the dollar payment system that developed in the last century.

Within the SCO format a special expert group was formed to work on this topic, he said. The road map was signed in September 2022. To date, six expert meetings have already taken place, Logvinov noted.

"Specialists are thoroughly analyzing the differences in legislation on currency regulation, identifying limiting factors and possible ways to eliminate them," he noted.

Logvinov recalled that today a significant volume of settlements in Russian-Chinese trade is carried out in national currencies. The experience of bilateral formats will also be useful for multilateral interaction, he noted.

In early December, co-chairman of the Russian-Chinese Committee of Friendship, Peace and Development, Commissioner under the President of Russia for the protection of the rights of entrepreneurs, Boris Titov, said that today 90% of settlements between China and Russia take place in national currencies.

The SCO is an international organization founded in 2001, which includes India, Iran, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. At the SCO summit in New Delhi in June, Belarus signed a memorandum of obligations in order to obtain the status of a member state of the organization. In total, the SCO family, which includes dialogue partners and observers, comprises 26 states.