Belarus needs shared currency with Russia to survive possible crisis - diplomat
MINSK. June 13 (Interfax) - The Russian ambassador to Belarus has argued that it is essential that Russia and Belarus resume talks on a proposal for the two countries to have the same currency and that Belarus would not survive a new crisis without sharing a currency with Russia.
"We should go back to the single currency issue. The Belarusian system won't survive another crisis, and domestic political complexities might arise," Alexander Surikov told Interfax. "If there emerge any indications of a crisis, we should push harder for this."
Surikov said the Belarusian ruble's current fluctuations versus the U.S. dollar did not mean a crisis is coming.
"A season of holidays and children's vacations has begun, so there's the usual seasonal demand for foreign currency. Moreover, the Belarusian currency is fluctuating because of the fluctuations of the Russian ruble. The Belarusian ruble is linked to a currency basket, and the weakening of the Russian ruble leads to the strengthening of the dollar. But one can't rule out the possibility of another structural crisis," the diplomat said.
He also called for resuming work on a constitution for the Union State of Belarus and Russia.
"We need to put the Union State on a legislative basis and partially hand over sovereignty to supranational bodies. We weren't able to take our bilateral relations along this path a while ago, but now we can look at it at another angle. After all, we have been able to hand over economic powers in the customs union of the three countries. We should make use of this experience in the bilateral format," Surikov said.