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Turkey, Russia working on boosting transactions in national currencies, says Erdogan

Russia and Turkey signed an agreement on settlements and payments in national currencies in October 2019

ANKARA, March 25. /TASS/. Turkey and Russia are negotiating to step up transactions in national currencies in the tourism sector, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in an interview with Turkish journalists on board his aircraft returning from the NATO summit.

"Our culture and tourism minister continues to work very hard and negotiate with all countries on this issue, we also continue to negotiate with all regions, be it Russia, Ukraine or Poland. They, particularly [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, have said that they will not hinder the tourism sector, they will encourage it and will not prevent their citizens from visiting Turkey. Moreover, the talks are underway on moving transactions to rubles, that is, to national currencies. We have already offered that to Russia, we have said that it may be done in rubles or Turkish liras. Now it has been fully proved that we were right, and they say they can do it," he was quoted as saying by the Hurriyet newspaper.

The Turkish leader hoped that the country would have no problems attracting tourists this year. "Some 2 million tourists from Ukraine and over 5 million from Russia visit us. We will have no problems with drawing tourists as we are a reliable country. Moreover, we will have an opportunity to welcome more tourists from the UK in the future. The same is true for Germany, we will be working in this direction," he explained.

Russia and Turkey signed an agreement on settlements and payments in national currencies in October 2019. The deal also stipulates a further expansion of the infrastructure for acceptance of Russia’s Mir cards on Turkish soil and connecting Turkish banks and companies to the System for Transfer of Financial Messages of the Bank of Russia, Russia’s analogue of the SWIFT system.

Russia faced an onslaught of global consolidated sanctions at the end of February after the start of the special military operation in Ukraine. In particular, the US and the EU slapped sanctions against Russia’s banking system, while such lenders as VTB, Rossiya and Otkritie, Novikombank, Promsvyazbank, Sovcombank and VEB.RF were cut off from the SWIFT system. The US and EU sanctions also targeted Russia’s state debt and the operations of the Central Bank of Russia.

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