The move comes after Russia’s second-biggest lender was hit hard by Western sanctions and cut off from SWIFT in 2022. In March, VTB considered selling its Angola subsidiary due to sanctions imposed following Russia’s renewed war of aggression in Ukraine.

“The key destinations in the outlook of this year will be India and Turkey, with whom our country has established partnership relations and where the tourist flow is now directed”, said Anatoly Pechatnikov, deputy president-chairman of VTB’s management board.

Last week, VTB CEO Andrei Kostin told Reuters VTB was working to ensure that Russians could pay comfortably from abroad. Kostin added that the dominance of the US dollar would soon come to an end, with the recent rise in popularity of the Chinese yuan.

Overall, GlobalData estimates the number of Russian cross-border transactions will reach 459 million in 2023, compared to 342 million recorded in 2022; in Iran’s case, that number will go up from 1.35 billion in 2022 to 1.68 billion in 2023.

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