MOSCOW, July 6. /TASS/. Russia and China can use the possibilities of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Development Bank of the BRICS grouping of the world’s five major emerging economies for developing bilateral and multilateral cooperation, Chinese Finance Minister Lou Jiwei said on Monday.

"Russia and China are the founding countries of the AIIB and are also investors of the BRICS Development Bank," he said at the 6th dialog of the finance ministers from both countries.

"We can use these two mechanisms, two structures for promoting Russian-Chinese bilateral and surely multilateral cooperation [with the participation of Russia and China]," the Chinese finance minister said.

The space for cooperation between China and Russia is much broader than what both countries have achieved by now, he added.

The first Russian-Chinese inter-ministerial dialog took place in October 2006. This year, the finance ministers from Russia and China are holding their dialog ahead of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit in Ufa on July 8-9. The summit will be the main event of Russia’s presidency in this informal association.

Russian, Chinese finance ministries to sign memorandum on national currency settlements

Russia’s and China’s finance ministries and central banks plan to sign a financial cooperation memorandum to stimulate settlements in national currencies, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Monday.

‘We have actually reached a final stage of preparing this document. I believe we’ll be able to sign it in the coming days," Siluanov said at the 6th dialog of the finance ministers from Russia and China.

"The memorandum deals with such issues as making settlements in national currencies, stimulating access to internal markets and so on," Siluanov said.

Russia and China are already "switching from words to deeds" in their interaction on such issues as access to financial markets, the use of national currencies in mutual settlements and these areas of cooperation "are expanding," the Russian finance minister said.

"The establishment of multilateral development banks, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, will be a step towards further increasing the amount of funds for financing our infrastructure projects," Siluanov said.