Russia and Egypt might soon exclude the US dollar and use their national currencies in the settlement of accounts in bilateral trade, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview to Egyptian media ahead of his visit to the country.
The issue of abandoning the dollar in trade is “being actively discussed,” Putin told Al-Ahram daily newspaper ahead of his two-day trip to Egypt. The Russian president was invited for a bilateral meeting by his Egyptian counterpart Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, RT reported.
“This measure will open up new prospects for trade and investment cooperation between our countries, reduce its dependence on the current trends in the world markets,” Putin said.
“I should note that we already use national currencies for trade with a number of the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] states, and China. This practice proves its worth; we are ready to adopt it in our relations with Egypt as well. This issue is being discussed in substance by relevant agencies of both countries.”
Egypt is a long-time and trusted partner of Russia and the relationship between the two countries has been rapidly developing, the Russian president said.
Bilateral Trade
“The volume of bilateral trade has increased significantly over the past years: In 2014, it increased by almost half compared to the previous year and amounted to more than $4.5 billion,” he said urging for this trend to be strengthened.
He also praised the development of “mutually beneficial and effective” cooperation in the sector of agriculture. “Egypt is the major buyer of Russian wheat, Russia provides about 40 percent of grain consumed in the country; as for us, we import fruits and vegetables.”
Moscow imposed a full ban of EU, US, Australian, Canadian, and Norwegian food exports to Russia on August 7 for one year. Amid Russian sanctions, Egypt said in August that it was ready to boost agricultural deliveries to Russia by 30 percent.
During 2013, Egypt’s deliveries of agricultural products to Russia amounted $440 million, while during the first half of 2014, Cairo supplied $460 million, said the head of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation, Nikolay Fedorov in August 2014.
Moscow and Cairo are also engaged in energy, automobile manufacturing and transport cooperation, developing the intergovernmental trade, economic and scientific-technical cooperation commission as well.
Moscow, Ankara
Russia and Turkey are working towards trade payments in national currencies, according to the president and CEO of Turkey’s DenizBank, Hakan Ates.
“We are ready to do everything to facilitate the transition to payments in national currencies. Such a transition is possible but our central banks have to make this decision. We’re already working in this direction but haven’t reached direct agreements so far. We have to make it happen,” Ates said.
DenizBank is almost entirely owned by Russia’s Sberbank, which has been under western sanctions since last summer.
Sberbank bought 99.85 percent of DenizBank from the French-Belgian Dexia Group in 2012. The price of $3.5 billion was the biggest foreign acquisition in the history of Sberbank.
Trade between Russia and Turkey reached $32.7 billion in 2014, making Turkey Russia’s eighth biggest trading partner, while Russia is Turkey’s second-largest trading partner, after the European Union.
The two countries are looking for closer economic ties. Energy has become one of the biggest areas of cooperation, after Moscow decided to redirect its gas from the cancelled South Stream to the new Turkish Stream pipeline.
The idea of switching to local currencies in settlements was last discussed at the G20 summit in Sydney in the summer. Turkey also discussed the creation of free trade zone with the Russia-led Customs Union.
