The banknote is symbolic. It was a present given by the Russian Ambassador in South Africa, Ilya Rogachev, to the Head of the Diplomatic Mission of the UAE, Mahash Saeed Alhameli. BRICS, an informal group of countries composed of the Federal Republic of Brazil, the Russian Federation, the Republic of India, the People’s Republic of China, and the Republic of South Africa, does not have a currency. Apart from that, the sun positioned in the middle of the symbolic banknote has 12 rays and does not resemble the Macedonian national flag, nor the flag with the Vergina Sun. The Macedonian national flag has a red background and a golden sun with eight sun rays. The flag previously used as the Macedonian flag has 16 rays, writes Truthmeter.mk.
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A viral post on the social network Facebook (screenshot here) claims that “The Macedonian sun” can be found on BRICS’ currency. This is not true.
THE MACEDONIAN SUN ON THE BRICS’ CURRENCY… SOMEONE SEEMS TO KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING!
The Facebook post claiming that the Macedonian sun can be found on BRICS currency attracted a great deal of attention on the social network. The post shares a photograph of an alleged banknote representing the BRICS currency. This post, however, is not true, i.e., the post shares several untruths.
Namely, BRICS does not have a single currency at all.
BRICS is an informal group of countries composed of the Federal Republic of Brazil, the Russian Federation, the Republic of India, the People’s Republic of China, and the Republic of South Africa. BRICS was established with the idea of being an alternative to the Western systems. The main spheres of cooperation are economy, finance, politics, security, culture… Member countries are jointly working in the fight against terrorism, money laundering, drug trafficking, and corruption.
This group of countries, however, does not have a single currency as claimed by the post, although some of the members have required such a thing.
At the last BRICS Summit, which took place in Johannesburg at the end of August, Brazilian President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, proposed to the BRICS nations to create a common currency for mutual trade and investment, as a means of reducing their vulnerability to the fluctuation of the exchange rate of the dollar. Officials and economists, however, pinpointed to the difficulties they were bound to encounter in implementing such a project bearing in mind the economic, political, and geographical differences between Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
Nevertheless, prior to the Summit, the South African authorities said that the BRICS currency was not on the agenda of the Summit.
There’s never been talk of a BRICS currency, it’s not on the agenda. What we have said and we continue to deepen is trading in local currencies and settlement in local currencies, stated Anil Sooklal, South Africa’s Ambassador at Large: Asia and BRICS in a media briefing a month before the Summit.
Previously, this month, India’s Minister of Foreign Affairs said that currencies will remain ”national competence for a long time”, while South African Central Governor, Lesetja Kganyago, stressed that a single currency would be a ”political project”.
If you want it, you’ll have to get a banking union, you’ll have to get a fiscal union, you’ve got to get microeconomic convergence”. Importantly, you need a disciplining mechanism for the countries that fall out of line with it… Plus, they will need a common central bank… where does it get located?, said Kganyago.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the gathering, which he attended via videolink, would discuss switching trade between member countries away from the dollar to national currencies.
China has not commented on the idea. President Xi Jinping spoke at the Summit of promoting ”the reform of the international financial and monetary system”.
The photograph in the Facebook post is not an official BRICS currency. Russia’s Ambassador to South Africa, Ilya Rogachev, presented the Head of the UAE’s diplomatic mission, Mahash Saeed Alhameli, with a symbolic banknote of a BRICS single currency, Iranian News Agency IRNA reports. According to the Agency, the diplomat said the banknote was made in Russia.
Rogachev presented the souvenir banknote at a reception at the UAE Embassy in Pretoria, dedicated to the country’s accession to BRICS, following the decision made at the Summit in Johannesburg to invite Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and Argentina to join the BRICS group.
According to the explanations given to the media, the central part of the symbolic banknote shows the national flags of the five members of the group – Brazil, China, India, Russia and South Africa – placed inside a ring. Each flag is accompanied by the name of the country, written in one of the official languages. Above the corresponding flag, there is an image of an architectural landmark or cultural site associated with each particular country.
And since BRICS have no single currency, “The Macedonian Sun” cannot be found on the non-existent currency. But even if this was a legitimate banknote, there is no reason for the “Macedonian Sun” to be placed on the banknote of a group of countries where North Macedonia is not a member of, nor has any aspirations to become a member therein. Apart from that, the sun in the middle of the symbolic banknote has nothing to do with North Macedonia.
The Macedonian national flag has a red background and a golden sun with eight sun rays. The Vergina Sun, the flag previously used as the Macedonian flag, is a sun with 16 rays. The sun presented on the symbolic banknote has 12 rays and does not resemble at all the Macedonian national flag, nor the Vergina Sun. Hence, it is completely incorrect to claim that it is the Macedonian sun.
According to all of the above-noted facts, we assess as untrue that the Macedonian flag can be found on the BRICS currency and it is also not true that BRICS countries have a single currency.
