Reimagining the World Monetary Order: BRICS Strategic Autonomy and the Promise of Shared Prosperity

The case for faster de-dollarization is a case for competitive monetary choice. China can contribute trade-linked renminbi infrastructure; India can help ensure that cooperation remains genuinely multicurrency; African and South Asian participants can shape products around their financing needs; and the NDB can support market development where benefits justify public risk. Their demographic and economic scale creates an opportunity, not an entitlement to monetary leadership. The alternative can begin with functioning markets rather than a single new currency. Its pace should be accelerated by reducing costs, improving asset usability and establishing confidence in settlement. The policy target is not a dramatic announcement that dollar dominance has ended. It is a growing set of transactions for which firms freely conclude that they no longer need it. Shared prosperity is therefore a criterion against which the programme should be judged, not an assumed consequence of diversification. It requires that lower payment costs, improved financing and greater resilience reach productive firms and development projects, and that public risks remain visible. BRICS has an opportunity to advance monetary pluralism through institutions that earn confidence transaction by transaction. The strength of the alternative will lie in its ability to deliver those benefits across members with different sizes, priorities and financial systems.  

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