Russia and Turkey look set to end a food-trade standoff after agreeing to lift restrictions on everything from wheat to sunflower oil, with the exception of tomatoes.

Both countries agreed to lift curbs, Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said after a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Sochi on Wednesday. While Russia hopes Turkey will cancel curbs on grains and sunflower oil in the coming days, restrictions on Turkish tomatoes may last for three to five years, Dvorkovich said.

The timing on each decision will be defined separately, he told reporters.

The agreement between Russia, the world’s top wheat exporter, and one of its biggest customers of the grain follows a tit-for-tat that began with a ban on Turkish tomatoes last year and escalated in March, when Turkey restricted imports of Russian wheat. The feud left Turkey, the biggest flour exporter, facing paying more for wheat elsewhere and Russia looking to offload bumper crops to other nations.

For tomatoes, Turkey will be able to sell the food to Russia in seasons when the country can’t grow sufficient amounts. Russia has accounted for 70 percent of all Turkish exports of the product.

Source:
courtesy of BLOOMBERG

by Ilya Arkhipov , Agnieszka De Sousa , and Yuliya Fedorinova

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