As per the President's executive order, starting November 1, special payment arrangements in roubles through designated accounts will become an optional method of payment under contracts for exports of Russian agricultural products. The resolution to approve the list of such products is aimed at ensuring Russia's financial stability under external sanction pressures and was signed by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.
The list includes pork, poultry meat and organs, milk, cream, barley, corn, wheat, meslin, soybeans, flaxseeds, as well as sunflower, soybean and rapeseed oil, sugar, oilseed meal and other solid residues obtained during extraction.
Special rouble and foreign currency accounts of type Z can be used to pay for exports of these products. These accounts are to be opened by foreign buyers with authorised banks. Buyers will have the option to transfer payments in foreign currency to a special foreign currency account and subsequently sell the currency to an authorised bank or on an exchange. The funds in roubles will then be credited to a special rouble account and transferred to the product supplier. Suspending transactions, freezing funds or debiting such accounts is not allowed, unless it is related to payments under foreign trade contracts.
The Government-approved list was drafted based on information about trading in Russian agricultural products on commodity exchanges and monitoring of over-the-counter transactions. Some items from the list have been developed in collaboration with respective industry associations.
