Reproduced in US and other media outlets, Reuters reported that Brazil’s Central Bank “more than quadrupled its yuan reserves last year as it reduced dollar and euro holdings.”
According to the Brazilian Valor, the BC did not inform “the reason for having reduced investments in dollars”, but now “there is even greater incentive for the yuan, after the US blocked Russian investments in dollars”.
In the Chinese financial institution Caixin (pictured above) and in the Japanese Nikkei, “Chinese steel companies are increasingly using the yuan to buy iron ore”, both from Brazil and Australia, and are becoming “a major force for internationalization of Chinese currency”.
In the same vein, at the top of the Japanese-British Financial Times, “Sanctions on Russia threaten to erode the dollar’s dominance, says IMF.” The multilateral institution in Washington projects a “slow trend towards other currencies” in foreign exchange reserves, noting the Chinese yuan, and “a more fragmented international monetary system”.
The Fund had already told Foreign Policy a week earlier, echoed by Bloomberg, to expect “countries reconsidering how much they hold [de dólar] in its reserves”, after the American sanctions.
INDIA UNDER PRESSURE
High on top Indian newspapers such as Jagran in Hindi and Times of India, “US increases pressure” on the country’s government, saying that “buying oil from Russia will affect Indo-American relations”.
The “sermons” delivered by the Secretaries of State and Commerce, among other US officials, took place “hours before” the arrival in New Delhi of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, with proposals to facilitate and increase bilateral trade.
FOR SALE TO CHINA OR INDIA
Bloomberg reports that British oil company BP has “contacted” Chinese (CNPC, Sinopec) and Indian (ONGC, Indian Oil) giants, as well as “state-owned companies in the Middle East”, to try to sell its Russian energy assets. She projects that the departure of Russia, after decades, will lead to a loss of US$ 25 billion.
GERMAN ALARM
In the headline in quotation marks from the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, with the BASF president’s statement, “Do we want to destroy our economy?”. He questions the high price of US gas purchases, arguing that “it is a fact that Russian gas has been the basis of our industry’s competitiveness.”
The FAZ also highlighted that the sector sees “hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk”, including at BASF in Ludwigshafen, “the largest chemical plant in the world” (pictured above).
