Turkey expects its trade turnover with Russia to exceed $30 billion by the end of 2021. This was stated on Friday by Turkish Trade Minister Mehmet Mush, speaking at the XXI joint meeting of the Russian-Turkish Business Council.
As the minister noted, due to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, trade turnover between the countries fell by 10% to about $20 billion. "On the other hand, in 2021, in the first half of the year, our trade turnover began to develop intensively. First of all, our exports increased by 25%, and imports from Russia increased by 44%. At the end of the year, we hope to reach turnover figures exceeding $30 billion, and the first figures for the first half of the year give us that hope," he said.
According to him, the Russian-Turkish partnership in this area has even more potential.
"Our trade turnover, our trade in general is definitely ultra-limited, so to reach the goal that our presidents [Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan] have set of $100 billion, we really need to identify new areas of cooperation, we need to diversify it, this is very important," Mush noted. He emphasized that Russia and Turkey have all the necessary infrastructure for this.
In turn, the chairman of the Turkish-Russian Business Council Mithat Yenigün noted that the trade turnover between Russia and Turkey is about $22-25 billion, so we need to do everything possible to achieve the goal set by the presidents of the two countries. "Our presidents have instructed us to increase the trade turnover up to $100 billion, and each of us is striving to achieve this goal, we are making every effort to do so. We are determined to reach that point," he said.
Earlier, the co-chairman of the mixed intergovernmental Russian-Turkish commission, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, noted that the trade turnover between Russia and Turkey was only $20 billion in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, but in the first half of 2021 the figure was already 40% higher than last year.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
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Based on materials from TASS