MOSCOW, October 5. /TASS/. Petr Aven, the head of Russia’s biggest commercial lender Alfa-Bank, said during an open lecture for Moscow students that he saw no alternative to the US dollar as a currency for international transactions.

"For today, I see no alternative in the global trade. It would be very inefficient and entail huge expenses. <…> If banks have no access to the US dollar, what should they do? [Should they] use the Russian ruble instead, as [VTB head] Andrei Kostin has said? It would be a bad decision for everyone," the Russian banker said.

Aven expressed hope that this scenario would not happen.

In August, Russian First Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that the US dollar was becoming a precarious settlement instrument in international trade, and did not rule out efforts to abandon the dollar in oil trade and shift to other currencies, including the ruble.

On October 3, Russia’s Economic Development Minister Maksim Oreshkin said that the Finance Ministry, the Economic Development Ministry and the Central Bank had already made their proposals regarding the dedollarization plan for the Russian economy for the government’s consideration.