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A bank official fans rouble banknotes at South Korea’s Hana Bank’s headquarter South Korea plans to open temporary settlement lines between domestic banks and their units in Russia in order to help companies hit by multinational sanctions against the country after its invasion of Ukraine.The government on Friday decided to take the ad hoc measure at the end of this month, in which South Korean banks settle payments for exporters if Russian importers pay for their purchases to the lenders’ units in the country that open accounts in their headquarters and deposit money in the accounts in advance, according to the Financial Services Commission (FSC).The authority said, however, the new settlement lines will not be allowed for transactions with Russian banks or items on the list of global sanctions against the country.The measure is aimed at minimizing the use of global intermediary banks that have been trying to avoid deals with Russia because of restrictions by the West, causing delays or rejections of payments for South Korean companies.“The method is expected to enable swift payments as it will minimize the use of intermediary banks,” the FSC said in a statement.South Korea has joined the multinational sanctions against Russia, including export controls and the removal of Moscow from the SWIFT global payment system.TO REMOVE TARIFFS FOR RARE GASES IN APRILSeparately, the government plans to immediately import crude oil produced by Korea National Oil Corp. (KNOC) once the war in Ukraine disrupts supply, the finance ministry said.The government is also set to lift tariffs on imports for noble gases such as neon and krypton, core materials used in semiconductor production, in April. South Korea currently imposes a 5.5% tariff on the imports for the gases. South Korea, home to the world’s top two memory chipmakers – Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc. has been relying on Russia and Ukraine for the rare gases needs.By So-Hyeon Kimalpha@hankyung.comJongwoo Cheon edited this article.
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