An owner of a money exchange counts the banknotes of Iran's rial. (Xinhua/Khalil Dawood)
TEHRAN, Aug. 28 (Xinhua) -- Iranian central bank chief said Sunday that Tehran and Moscow will expand the use of national currencies in transactions to other areas of bilateral trade, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.
Governor of the Central Bank of Iran Ali Salehabadi said that using national currencies in bilateral trade with other countries was among the priorities of the administration of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, which primarily began with the launch of the Iranian rial-Russian ruble trading in July.
He noted that Iran and Russia have already started trading using the rial-ruble pair in a number of bilateral markets, which will be expanded to other areas of their transactions.
Photo taken on March 24, 2022 shows ruble banknotes and coins in Moscow, capital of Russia. Russia will reject U.S. dollars or euros and only accept rubles for its natural gas supplied to "unfriendly countries," including the European Union (EU) members and the United States, President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday. (Xinhua/Bai Xueqi)
In late July, Salehabadi announced that the Tehran Stock Exchange had launched the rial-ruble trading, according to the official news agency IRNA.
He stressed that under the world's present political circumstances where major currencies have been used as political tools by the hegemonic powers, using local currencies in bilateral and multilateral trade transactions can be an effective solution to neutralizing major powers' political coercive measures to dominate other countries.
Both Iran and Russia are under U.S.-led Western sanctions. Russia will gradually abandon the U.S. dollar in its trade with Iran, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov had said earlier. ■
