Minsk and Moscow agree to restructure payments on Russian loans, stop using dollar in settlements for energy

MINSK. March 14 (Interfax) - Belarus and Russia have agreed to restructure payments on the loans granted by Russia and to stop using the U.S. dollar in settlements for energy sources, Belarusian Prime Minister Roman Golovchenko said after talks with his Russian counterpart Mikhail Mishustin in Moscow on Monday.

"A decision has been adopted to restructure the loans provided by the Russian Federation, to repay them by installments and to convert them from the foreign currency to Russian rubles. In principle, it will apply to all of our agreements. Furthermore, we adopted a decision to stop using the dollar in all of our settlements for energy sources," the Belarusian government's press service quoted Golovchenko as saying.