It could not immediately be determined how much Russian oil Indian refiners have bought with yuan, although Indian Oil has paid in yuan for multiple cargoes, sources said.
Multiple cargoes lol
Yes India continues to buy sanctioned oil.
The bigger deal is buying it in the yuan. That could have far reaching changes to the global economy. Right now the world’s reserve currency is the US dollar because the vast majority of oil is bought with them. If enough oil is bought in a different currency, that has the potential to shift the world’s reserve currency to whatever is used. Whoever’s currency is used as the world’s reserve currency will get a lot of power.
That’s not why this is weird, the fact that India is shifting deeper into the bRICs is.
China has been a strategic threat to India, between their close alliance and support of Pakistan and the whole kashmir thing, plus the past skirmishes in aksai chin (even in 2020/2021).
Modi doesn’t really care about geopolitical history, he lives in the moment, whether that makes sense or not, hence surprise invalidating the currency over a weekend.
But I don’t see how a menage a trois works here, especially given India’s ties to the US.
This sounds like a Russian demand because they were tired of being paid in weak rupees. Knowing Modi, he’d gladly go along as long as he got a cut, and it hurt Pakistan enough.
I don’t know why people keep acting as if western sanctions are supposed to mean anything to other countries. The only legal international sanctions would be issued by UN.
It’s also worth noting that a reserve currency is not any sort of necessity for global trade. Countries can just do trade in their respective currencies and hold commodities such as gold in terms of assets. What makes yuan attractive for countries is the fact that China is the global manufacturing power house, and countries can always use yuan to pay for things they need to purchase from China. Given that China is already the biggest trading partner for most countries, holding yuan becomes a safe bet for them.
I do expect that we’ll see dollar based economy shrink fairly rapidly, especially with Saudis and other oil produces now selling oil outside the dollar. The fact that you could only buy oil using dollars was one of the main reason why there was a constant demand for dollar.
The most likely scenario in the near future is that we’ll see a bifurcated world economy between the BRICS and the west.
How dare a sovereign country choose their trade currency! We must sanction them immediately!
