Turkey: Exports to Russia fell by almost a third – 2024-07-31 22:49:47

Exports of goods from Turkey to Russia decreased by 28.3% in the first half of 2024 compared to the corresponding period of 2023, Turkish statistical agency TurkStat announced on Wednesday.

In particular, exports from Turkey to Russia reached 4.16 billion dollars this year, when in the corresponding period of last year they had risen to 5.6 billion dollars.

US sanctions on Russia hit Turkey

The RBC newspaper links the drop in exports to the sanctions imposed by the US on Russia, which make payments more difficult for Turkey and more generally for other countries that trade with Moscow.

The problems with the payments arose after US President Joe Biden’s executive order last December, which established a sanctions mechanism against third-country banks that work with Russia’s military industrial complex.

In June, the United States included all previously sanctioned companies and individuals on its list of those with ties to Russia’s military-industrial complex. The same list will include companies and natural persons that will be sanctioned in the future.

Recently, the Russian newspaper Kommersant, citing a source in the financial market, wrote that about 80% of payments from Russia to China are returned because Chinese banks are afraid of secondary sanctions.

Bloomberg also recently wrote in an article (Russian Miner Nornickel Weighs Projects in New Top Market China) that the Russian company Nornickel is trying to open a factory in China to avoid problems with metal exports to China. The CEO of Nornickel, Vladimir Potanin, said that the reason that forces him to open a factory in China is that because of the sanctions it has become impossible to import equipment to modernize the factories in Russia.

Source: ot.gr