Baby & Kid Store / January’ 19

News
Turkey receives
$200B in investments
over last 16 years
Foreign direct investment (FDI) in Turkey, which amounted
to only $15 billion until 2002, has reached approximately
$200 billion in the last 16 years, the head of the presidential
office for investments said.
“Not just developing ones, developed countries are also
carrying out efforts to attract new investments,” said Arda
Ermut, the head of the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey
Investment Office. He stressed that more countries
are trying to claim a bigger share of the pie because many
have stopped growing, some has even shrunk during the
recent financial crises. Ermut was speaking at the 3rd Istanbul
PPP Week panel on the “Presidential System and
Turkish Investment Climate,” in Istanbul. The event, attended
by over 40 bureaucrats from 26 countries, was organized
by the Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEİK). The
Presidency of the Republic of Turkey Investment Office,
previously called the Republic of Turkey Prime Ministry
Investment Support and Promotion Agency (ISPAT), was
restructured under the new governance system.Speaking
of ISPAT, Ermut said that since the day of its foundation,
the agency has made some serious progress. “In this process,
awareness on the importance of direct investments
has increased not only in-house but also in bureaucracy
and government institutions,” he added. He said that one
of the most important guarantees for investors coming to
Turkey is the country’s obligation to attract direct investments
and that Turkey has taken very important steps in
this field for years, providing ease of doing business in the
process.
Ermut pointed to the development model drawn by President
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as an important part of the
reforms. He said the reforms related to this development
model were intensively realized in 2002-2003 period. “This
reform program has paved the way for more direct investments
in Turkey,” Ermut continued, highlighting that its
reflection has been quite well so far.
“As you know, foreign direct investment made in Turkey
amounted to only $15 billion until 2002; that figure has reached
approximately $200 billion since,” he said, pointing
to the significant reforms, improvements in the investment
environment and investments in developing countries up
to 2009. The total FDI in Turkey from January to August
this year was around $7 billion, roughly the same as last year’s
FDI in the same period. Ermut had previously said that
the investment office expected to exceed $11 billion in foreign
investments this year, the same as in 2017. DEİK Chairman
Nail Olpak said that the 3rd Istanbul PPP Week has
provided the international business world with clear and
accurate information about the strategies and steps taken
to develop the investment environment in Turkey. He said
that the atmosphere of the talks, held with the members of
local and international partners conducting overseas business
activities, foresaw that the Presidential Governance
System will positively affect Turley’s investment climate.
He also underlined that Turkey possesses important experience
and knowledge in the field of public-private partnership.
“Over the past year, we have fielded many questions about
our experience and knowledge in a wide geography, including
countries in the Balkans, Central Asia and the Middle
East, at the many business forums and roundtables DEİK
organized. We always do our best to answer these questions,”
Olpak said.
116 Ocak 2019