Due to international sanctions, Iran cannot get money for its gas exports to Turkey in foreign currency, therefore the country has to pay for it in gold, the newspaper The Lira quotes Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan as saying on Friday.
In July, several Turkish media outlets reported that Turkey had begun paying for oil and gas imports from Iran in gold since March 2012, after the SWIFT Company, which was engaged in money transfer to Iran, stopped cooperating with Tehran in March this year.
Later Turkish Energy and Natural Resources Minister Taner Yildiz said that information that Turkey pays for energy resources imported from Iran in gold is not true.
According to the Statistics Institute of Turkey, gold exports from Turkey to Iran in the second quarter of 2012 totalled $4.8 billion compared to $1 billion in the first quarter.
Turkey imports eight million tons of oil and eight billion cubic meters of gas from Iran every year.
(Trend AZ)
