On Tuesday 1 November, the spokesperson for the Russian Customs Service reported that the first Turkish citrus shipments to the Russian market are currently subject to customs clearance procedures at the Russian port of Novorossiysk, on the Black Sea.
On 11 October, the Russian government published a decree to allow the import of certain varieties of fruit and mandarin oranges from Turkey, as part of the normalization of economic and trade relations between Moscow and Ankara.
Earlier, late last year, Russia had imposed a ban on the import of some Turkish agricultural products, including oranges, mandarins, grapes, apples and pears, against the backdrop of the worsening relations between the two countries as a result of the Turkish Air Force downing a Russian plane in Syria last year.
In the past year, Turkey's food exports to Russia have been worth about $ 900 million. This is 22.2% of Turkey's total exports to the Russian market, which amounted to $ 4.05 billion, according to data from the Turkish Statistics Authority.
