The following report is by The Daily Indian Express:
In a landmark deal signed by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov last week, both sides agreed to adopt the Russian financial messaging system — Service Bureau of Financial Messaging System of the Bank of Russia (SPFS) — for cross-border payments.
Another key element of the agreement signed on April 18 during Manturov’s visit to India, is to allow acceptance of Indian Ru-Pay cards and India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) in Russia, and the Russian MIR cards and its Fast Payments System (FPS) in India.
With this, the two countries will be able to resolve most of their pending payment issues. Top banking and finance officials from the two countries are working out the details to use these instruments to settle cross-border payments effectively. According to sources, India’s central bank — Reserve Bank of India — has set up a multi-disciplinary working group to implement it.
India and Russia have already agreed to settle payments through Special Rupee Vostro Accounts (SRVA). The April 18 pact clarified that Russia can use the surplus Indian rupees to conduct other businesses in India or remit back to Russia.
As for SPFS, it is a financial messaging system that works on the same lines as the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), the international payment system used by thousands of financial institutions to transfer funds worldwide. After Russia invaded Ukraine, the EU and other Western countries removed top Russian banks from the SWIFT network. Russia had been asking India to use SPFS. It developed SPFS after it was threatened with expulsion from SWIFT when it annexed Crimea in 2014.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
It is also worth noting that ‘about $2 billion in payments from India to Russia is stuck over the last year, and Russia has decided to stop supplying credit for about $10 billion worth of spare parts as well as the two S-400 missile-defence system batteries that are yet to be delivered,’ according Bloomberg, cited by The Wire.
But Russia and India – two of the original nations that make up BRICS – are once again move faster and faster to strengthen trade with each other and other Eastern nations. All the American and European sanctions did was push the Eastern nations together even tighter; and already growing sick of the United States’ bullying, both militarily and economically, these nations are ganging up to circumvent the dollar.
Again, the dollar’s ultimate demise will not happen overnight, but is rapidly happening and will come sooner than later; and when the last domino falls, the American lifestyle will change quite rapidly, which is putting it mildly. But most Americans scoff at this, as do the arrogant politicians, pundits, and “prophets.”
The rich man’s wealth is his strong city, and as an high wall in his own conceit.
Proverbs 18:11
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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