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VTB head says issue of payments in yuan with third countries being worked out

China is currently Russia’s biggest financial partner despite the small share of the yuan in global payments

SHANGHAI, May 23. /TASS/. The issue of conducting payments between Russia and third countries in yuan is being worked out, though it requires China’s approval, president and chairman of Russia’s VTB Bank Andrey Kostin told TASS on Tuesday.

"We have already abandoned the dollar and shifted to rubles and yuan by 70% in trade with China, or over $190 bln. Moreover, we are actively developing the issues of possibly conducting payments with third countries in yuan now as many of them are ready to work in yuan and a corresponding approval by the Chinese side is necessary," he said at a Russian-Chinese Business Forum in Shanghai.

China is currently Russia’s biggest financial partner despite the small share of the yuan in global payments, Kostin noted. He also pointed to a number of problems related both to the period of the coronavirus spread and to fundamental changes in global politics and the state of the Russian financial sector.

"Today we are still forced to work more from the position of the sanctioned banking sector. This surely takes its toll. Our colleagues are gradually turning their face to us. The first reaction was quite cautious, though now I think there is an understanding that the US and the western world have announced the line of deterrence of not only Russia, but China as well. Chinese companies are also being sanctioned, and I think this shows that we should cooperate, and not only through unsanctioned companies," Chief executive of Russia’s second-biggest bank noted.

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