Turkey and Russia are negotiating to increase settlements in national currencies in the tourism sector. This was announced by Turkish President Recep Erdogan in an interview with Turkish journalists on board his plane on his return from the NATO summit.
"Our minister of culture and tourism continues to work very hard and negotiate with all the countries on this issue, we also continue to negotiate with all the regions, whether it is Russia, Ukraine or Poland. They, especially [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, have said that they will not hinder the tourism sector, will encourage it and will not obstruct their citizens to travel to Turkey. In addition, there is talk about conducting transactions in rubles, that is, in their national currencies. We already suggested this to Russia; we said it could be done in rubles and Turkish Liras. Now our rightness is fully proven, and they say they can do it," Hurriyet newspaper quoted him as saying on Friday.
Erdogan expressed confidence that Turkey will have no problem attracting tourists this year.
"We have 2 million tourists coming to us from Ukraine and more than 5 million from Russia. We will have no problems with attracting tourists, as we are a reliable country. Moreover, we will have the opportunity to receive more tourists from England in the future. The same applies to Germany. We will work in this direction," he added.
Russia and Turkey signed an agreement on settlements and payments in national currencies in October 2019. The agreement also provides for further expansion of the infrastructure for accepting Russian Mir cards in Turkey and connecting Turkish banks and companies to the Bank of Russia's financial messaging system (SPFS), the Russian equivalent of SWIFT.
Russia faced a wave of international consolidated sanctions in late February due to the start of the military special operation in Ukraine. In particular, the US and the EU imposed sanctions on the Russian banking system, while VTB, Rossiya and Otkritie banks, Novikombank, Promsvyazbank, Sovcombank and VEB.RF were cut off from the SWIFT system. In addition, the US and EU sanctions affected Russia's sovereign debt and the operations of the Central Bank of Russia.
GSV "Russia - Islamic world"
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Based on materials from TASS