Turkey aims to boost trade with Russia to $100 billion

Turkish President Recep Erdogan has set an ambitious goal for bilateral trade with Russia, saying he wants to boost it to $100 billion, nearly four times more than the current trade volume between the two countries.

Last year’s $26 billion in trade turnover does not reflect the cooperation potential between Russia and Turkey, Erdogan said during the meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday.

Ankara is making “every effort” to ease trade ties with Moscow and is therefore going to provide exemptions for Russian entrepreneurs, said the Turkish president.

“We do not view your firms as foreign or Russian, we view them as our own,” the Turkish President said as cited by TASS. “Russian entrepreneurs willing to invest in Turkey will be provided with various exemptions.”

Bilateral trade of the two countries grew by 16 percent in 2018, while the volume of mutual investment is approaching 20 billion, said Putin during the joint news conference with Erdogan.

The two countries are working closely in the energy sector, including such flagship projects as the construction of the first nuclear power plant in Turkey, Akkuyu, as well as the Turkish Stream natural gas pipeline, also known as the TurkStream. In March, land and sea sections of the pipeline were connected and it is set to become operational by the end of this year, according to Putin.

Russia and Turkey also announced that they created a €900 million joint investment fund. The fund “will be extremely important to revitalize Russian-Turkish investment,” the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Kirill Dmitriev, said as he announced the deal on Monday.

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