YEREVAN, February 17. /ARKA/. Dmitry Pankin, President of the Black Sea Trade and Development Bank (BSTDB), is skeptical about the idea of a single currency.
«Honestly speaking, I haven't much faith in the single currency idea," he said in an exclusive interview with ARKA News Agency. "First, to create a single unit of account it is necessary to have absolutely different level of macroeconomic interaction among countries."

Pankin said that coordination economic, financial and budgetary policy is necessary as well. In addition, it is very important that participants in such unions have a comparable share in GDP, as can be seen in the EU, where large countries represented by Germany, France, Italy are present.

The situation, he said, is completely different in the countries of the Eurasian Union, where Russia has 85% of the total GDP.

"It would be logical to assume that the Russian ruble could become such a unit of account. But other countries are not ready to recognize the ruble as the single currency of the EAEU, and to invent some kind of currency or something artificial, I don’t think it will be right, ”the head of the Bank said.

The Black Sea Trade and Development Bank (BSTDB) is international financial institution established by Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Greece, Georgia, Moldova, Russia, Romania, Turkey and Ukraine. The organization's headquarter is in Thessaloniki.

The BSTDB supports economic development and regional cooperation by providing loans, guarantees, and equity for development projects and trade transactions. It supports both public and private enterprises in member countries and does not attach political conditionality to its financing.
Armenia's share in the BSTDB capital is 1%.

Since 1999, the bank has approved financing for 400 programs of the total amount of €6.1 billion. The bank started providing loans to Armenia in 2004. The bank has sealed in Armenia 36 lending programs totaling €241 million over a period between 2004 and 2020. The lent financial means were used for financing SMEs and trade as well as providing mortgage loans. -0---