Brazil's Lula supports trading currency for BRICS countries

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday said he supported establishing a currency for trade between BRICS countries, a group that includes his nation as well as Russia, India, China and South Africa.

"I am in favour of creating, within the BRICS, a trading currency between our countries, just like the Europeans created the euro," Lula said in a speech during a trip to Spain, without providing further details.

The leftist leader added that he would also support a potential shared trading unit for South American nations.

It was not the first time Lula floated the idea of a common currency, having previously said in a trip to China that such a measure could help developing countries depend less on the US dollar.

Earlier this year he had also suggested that Brazil and Argentina could establish a shared unit of value for bilateral trade. Argentina has long suffered from a series of challenges, including a lack of dollars and inflation of more than 100%.

Lula on Wednesday also praised the New Development Bank (NDB), the multilateral lender set up by the BRICS states whose new head is former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, saying he would work for it to "effectively become a large investment bank."

"If possible even larger than the World Bank," he added.

Speaking on a broad range of topics, Lula also said his government would not privatise any public company and once again called for an expansion of the UN Security Council's permanent members.

He also defended his proposal for a "peace group" to broker an agreement between Russia and Ukraine, saying anything could be discussed once the nations sat down to talk peace.