ANKARA: Turkey has imposed new restrictions on the import of Russian wheat. From now on, only 20-25 percent of all issued licenses for imports should fall for Russian share, RIA Novosti reported citing the newspaper Vedomosti. Top managers of two Russian exporters specializing in supplies to Turkey confirmed this data. A representative of the Agriculture Ministry informed that there had been no official information from the Turkish side. This relates to licenses for the supply of wheat in the “internal processing” mode. Such a license allows delivering grain to the country without duty for processing and further export, explains one of the traders. This regime operates in Turkey for all countries for protecting the domestic market.
Turkey from March 15 suspended the issuance of licenses for duty-free supplies of wheat, corn and sunflower meal from Russia. Meanwhile, Russia’s food embargo on Turkey’s food and agricultural products remains partly in place. In early 2016, Russia imposed a number of restrictive measures, including a ban on food and flowers imports, on Turkey in response to the downing of a Russian military aircraft by a Turkish fighter jet in Syria on November 24, 2015. The meeting held between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on May 3 has marked the “full-format” restoration of bilateral ties and focused on trade restrictions and barriers lifting. During this meeting, Russia and Turkey agreed upon comprehensive settlement of restrictions in bilateral economic relations.
Many restrictions have been recently removed in accordance with agreements reached with Russia following the results of the talks between Turkish Prime minister Binali Yildirim and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in Istanbul. For Ankara, Moscow is a strategic supplier of agricultural products. In recent years, 70-75 percent of the flour in Turkey was produced from Russian wheat. In turn, Russia delivers 12-13% of exported wheat to Turkey. In fact, Turkey has decided to quote supplies of Russian wheat, said the director of “Sovecon” Andrei Sizov. Probably, this is due to the fact that Russia has not yet lifted the ban on tomatoes, which remains a very sensitive issue for Turkey.
