It’s time to think about the prospects of creating a currency union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, President Vladimir Putin said Friday at a meeting with his Kazakh and Belarusian counterparts Nursultan Nazarbaev and Alyaksandr Lukashenka in Astana.
“We think the time has come to talk about the possibility to form a currency union in the future,” Russia Today quotes Putin as saying.
It’s easier to protect the common financial market when working shoulder to shoulder, he added.
Putin made his proposal at the meeting which highlighted the challenges facing the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union following the fall in global oil prices and the decline of the Russian rouble.
Lukashenka and Nazarbayev did not immediately respond to the proposal in public, but analysts say it is unlikely to get off the ground, reuters.com says.
In the course of the meeting the Belarusian leader stressed that the creation of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) was ‘a very well-timed decision’ amid the crisis in the global economy, and urged his partners to ‘demonstrate the economic and political unity in the run-up to the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory’.
