Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Diplomacy Mehdi Safari says that members of the BRICS grouping of emerging economies will continue to carry out trade in local currencies.

According to The Iran Project,Trade exchanges are being carried out through local currencies by the members in a bid to ditch the US dollar, Safari told IRNA on the sidelines of the BRICS Sherpas and Sous-Sherpas meeting held in Moscow from January 29 to February 2.

He said, however, that BRICS will continue efforts to create a joint currency in the long-run to become completely free of the need to rely on major international currencies. 

During the three-day meeting, all events scheduled to be held in 2024 were reviewed and 239 programs were approved, said the Iranian official. 

He said that BRICS members also discussed multilateral cooperation in the fields of finance, banking, energy, transportation, artificial intelligence, politics, security and cultural relations in the meeting.

Russia will chair BRICS in 2024 under the slogan "Strengthening Multilateralism for Equitable Global Development and Security."

Last year, Iran, along five other countries, were invited to join BRICS, which comprises of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, from January this year. A new government in Argentina, which was one of the invitees, has notified BRICS that it will not join the bloc.