MOSOCON (Reuters) – The old barter in Russia’s foreign trade is increasing for the first time in the 1990s, as companies seeking to overcome Western sanctions of Chinese cars and flax seeds for building materials.
Although Russia is adopting warm relations with China and India, the return of barter shows to no extent to which the war in Ukraine has distorted trade relations of the world’s largest natural resource producer, three decades after the 1991 Soviet Union collapsed with the Russian economic with the West.
The United States, Europe and allies imposed more than 25,000 different penalties on Russia on the 2022 war in Ukraine and the inclusion of Crimea 2014 in an attempt to dump Russia’s economy worth $ 2.2 trillion and undermined support for President Vladimir Putin.
Washington also struck India with definitions in response to the New Delhi oil trade with Russia.
Putin says the Russian economy outperformed expectations. It has grown faster over the past two years than the G7 countries, despite the western predictions of an accident accident. Companies and officials have ordered the challenge of sanctions in every possible way.
However, there are increasing signs of pressure on the economy, which the central bank now shows technically in stagnation that suffers from great enlargement.
Some punitive measures – especially the secession of Russian banks from the rapid payments system in 2022 and Washington’s warnings of Chinese banks last year against supporting the Russian war effort – stunned fears of secondary sanctions.
“Chinese banks are afraid to place in the sanctions lists, according to secondary sanctions, so money is not accepted from Russia,” a source in the payment market told Reuters.
These fears seem behind the appearance of barter transactions, which are difficult to track. In 2024, the Russian Ministry of Economy issued a “14 -page foreign barter transactions”, and advice to companies on how to use the method for hiking in sanctions. He even suggested creating a trading platform that would exchange barter books.
The document said: “Foreign trade exchange transactions allow the exchange of goods and services with foreign companies without the need for international transactions,” noting that “the conditions for penalties.”
Until recently, there was little evidence of commercial interest in such transactions. However, Reuters told Reuters last month that Hayanan Longman Laxfield Technology in China was seeking to circulate steel and aluminum alloys in exchange for marine engines.
The company did not respond to a request for comment.
For this story, Reuters managed to identify eight transactions of these goods on the basis of commercial sources and public data from customs services and company data. The transactions have not been reported before.
While the news agency was unable to determine the total value or the size of the barter in the Russian economy due to the departure of transactions, three commercial sources said that the practice became more frequent.
“The growth of bartering is one of the symptoms of disposal of vanishing, the pressure of sanctions and liquidity between the partners,” said Maxim Spasky, Secretary of the General Council of the Russian Asian Federation for Industrialists and Businessmen, an industry. Spacci said that the sizes of barter are likely to grow more.
One of the commercial sources – who occurs, said, provided that his identity is not disclosed due to the sensitivity of information – that the system helped to circumvent the sanctions separating Russian banks from the dollar and euro transactions.
Three analysts said that a possible indication of the barter group was the broad difference between the foreign trade trade statistics and customs service data, which amounted to 7 billion dollars in the first half of this year.
In response to the comment request, the Russian customs ceremony confirmed that the barter was implemented with different countries “for a wide range of goods”. However, the number of barter transactions was unimportant compared to the sizes of the total foreign trade contract.
The foreign trade surplus in Russia in January -July decreased by 14 % compared to the previous year, to 77.2 billion dollars, according to the data published by the federal customs service. Exports decreased during this period by $ 11.5 billion to 232.6 billion dollars, while imports increased by $ 1.2 billion to 155.4 billion dollars.
The government and the central bank refused to discuss barter with Reuters beyond saying that there are no data available in such transactions that will be included in the total numbers if they are legally reported. One of the sources close to the government said that the difference in data may be due to the differences in the methodology.
Cars for grains
In one of the transactions identified by Reuters from two commercial sources, Chinese cars were circulated to Russian wheat. According to one of the sources, the Chinese partners asked the deal from their Russian counterparts to pay the grain.
Chinese partners bought cars in China to the yuan. The Russian partner bought pimples with rubles. Then wheat was exchanged for cars.
Reuters could not create circulating folders, nor the mechanism that traders decided to value pills or cars.
In two other transactions, flaxseed was exchanged for commodities including home appliances and building materials from China, as customs data appear. Experts who have knowledge of Russia’s external trading said that one of the linen deals, registered in a statement in 2024 by the Russian customs service in the Orlers region, was estimated at $ 100,000.
China is a major importer of Russian flaxseed, and is used in industrial processes and as a diet.
In other transactions, the minerals were delivered to China in exchange for machines, Chinese services were replaced for raw materials, and a Russian aluminum importer bought to pay a Chinese company. It was one deal with Pakistan.
Some barter transactions have allowed the import of Western goods to Russia despite the sanctions, and there are two sources of transaction, without providing details about the goods.
At the Kazan Expo Business Forum in August, Chinese companies were martyred with issues of settlement between problems that hinder the development of bilateral trade. Shu Xinjing, president of Hainan Longpan Oilfield Technology Co. said. , LTD, TRADE Barter may be a solution.
Speaking at the conference, Shaw said that “in the current circumstances of limited payments,” Barter has provided new opportunities for institutions in Russia and Asian countries.
Sprinkle of chaos in the nineties
In the aftermath of the Soviet collapse in the 1990s, chaos was planted through the economy, as vast chains of emergency deals were created for everything from electricity, oil to flour, sugar and shoes, allowing the pricing of fraud that made the value hard to determine its wealth and gain it to some.
At that time, the lack of ready -made money, vast inflation and frequent disintegration made barter attractive. Now, there is a lot of money, but barter is paid by constantly changing pressure to threaten Western sanctions on Russia and China.
Russia says Western sanctions are illegal and that China criticized it as discriminatory.
Bathing is not the only solution. Some traders used the so -called “payment agents”, who facilitate fees through various plans, but such transactions can be risky.
Another way to carry out the payment is through the state -owned VTB Bank in Russia, which owns a branch in Shanghai. Others use cryptocurrencies associated with US dollars.
“Small companies are using encryption activity. Some transportation money, some businesses through displacement, and some various accounts with different banks, said Sergei Boatingski, Vice President of Operations and Information Technology at BCS, a leading Russian financial company.
“There is no technological answer ready yet. The economy escapes, and the work is applied simultaneously 10-15 different payment methods,” he said.
(Reuters ’reports, edited by Jay Voliconbridge and Frank Jack Daniel)
