Currency wars not that huge a bogey – Russia’s Deputy Finance Minister
While experts around the world warn against the drastic effects currency wars could produce on the global economy, “it’s not something that’s going to bring the world to its end,” Aleksey Moiseev, Russia’s Deputy Finance Minister, told RT.
“I wouldn’t overdramatize the issue,” Moiseev told Business RT.Currency wars, or an artificial devaluation of currencies aimed at making domestically produced goods more competitive in the global market, has become one of the key concerns for experts. While creating undoubted advantages for exporters, the move creates a risk of spurring inflation, as well as hurting neighboring economies. On top of that, as any war, it could create geopolitical tension.“I think, the effectiveness of the attempts by various countries to depreciate their currencies would be quite low,” Moiseev commented.Action over currency wars came from the Group of G7 nations on Tuesday, when they said they would leave their currency exchange rates to market forces."We reaffirm that our fiscal and monetary policies have been and will remain oriented towards meeting our respective domestic objectives using domestic instruments, and that we will not target exchange rates," they said.Stimulating real growth and attracting foreign investment are far more important issues, the Deputy Finance Minister stressed. The topic is set to come to a center stage at a two – day G20 meeting in Moscow, scheduled to start on February 15. “The most important topic, in my opinion, would be stimulating foreign investment. We understand that this is the main challenge for this world to generate enough investment to support growth.”“Second, of course, we expect to discuss new concepts of debt management, debt levels and sort of best standards of countries should behave in the face of that problems and so on,” Moiseev told RT. Finance Ministers and the heads of the Central Banks of G20 nations will meet in Moscow this week ahead of the main September G20 summit in Moscow. This will be the first time Russia will host the meeting – an event that has taken place at least once a year since 1999.
