Can Turkey-Russia trade reach $100 billion target?
The two countries have been after this target since 2013, but until now have only reached $38 billion.
During the landmark St. Petersburg summit between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on Aug. 9, the two leaders expressed desire to boost their volume of trade to $100 billion annually.
But bearing in mind the highest level of trade volume between the two countries was $38 billion in 2008, achieving the new goal will not be easy.
Reviewing the past 20 years of trade volume, we see that in 1997 the volume was $4.230 billion. Until the end of 2002, the highest level reached was about $5 billion. In 2003, it was $6.8 billion; in 2004, $10.8 billion; in 2005, $15.2 billion; in 2006, $21 billion; and in 2007, $28.2 billion. The upward trend peaked at $37.847 billion in 2008.
Because of the global economic crisis, the volume regressed to $22.6 billion in 2009, and it hasn’t reached the 2008 level since. The trade volume was $26.2 billion in 2010, $29.9 billion in 2011 and $33.3 billion in 2012.
