| By Gill Tudor
ANKARA, Oct 14 (Reuters) – Turkey, grappling with a swelling current-account gap, is working hard to boost trade with neighbouring countries including war-torn Iraq, its foreign trade minister said on Tuesday.
Kursad Tuzmen said the NATO member and European Union hopeful, sitting at the junction of Europe, central Asia and the Middle East, wanted both to strengthen its own fragile economy and to promote regional stability through mutual trade.
“The chaotic environment around us affects us a lot in our trade relations, but we are trying to increase them,” Tuzmen told Reuters in an interview.
“We want rich neighbours in our neighbourhood.”
Turkey’s current-account deficit looks set to reach around three percent of gross national product (GNP) by the end of 2003 compared to about half that last year, and some analysts say the burgeoning gap could cause financing problems.
Tuzmen said Turkish exports to Iraq, Turkey’s second biggest trading partner before the Gulf crisis in 1990, were currently running at between $100 million and $120 million a month and looked set to total up to $1 billion this year.
But he expected this to double in 2004 as Iraq began to stabilise and Turkish businesses forged more links there. Total trade with Iraq could reach $4 billion next year, balanced equally between exports and imports — the latter mainly oil.
“I’m sure we are going to increase our exports, but of course the chaotic environment in Iraq must change. The vacuum must be filled,” he said.
Turkish businesses are hoping for a good slice of lucrative reconstruction work in Iraq, particularly after the country patched up strained relations with Washington this month by agreeing to send troops to help U.S.-led forces there.
Turkey is also a convenient choice to supply provisions for the foreign forces across the border, although Tuzmen said this was only a marginal element of total exports to Iraq.
EXPORTS TO ARMENIA? Tuzmen said he also wanted to increase trade with all Turkey’s other immediate neighbours — even Armenia, with which Turkey has no diplomatic relations and a closed border.
Officially the rift stems from Ankara’s support for Azerbaijan against the breakaway Armenian government in Nagorno-Karabakh. But passions also run high over Armenian allegations that Turkey committed genocide against ethnic Armenians in 1915, a charge Ankara denies.
Tuzmen said Turkish goods could already be found in Armenia, but they had been re-exported by third countries such as Iran.
“I would like to improve my trade with every neighbouring country,” Tuzmen said, referring directly to Armenia but declining further comment.
Trade with Turkey’s other close neighbours — Greece, Bulgaria, Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq and Syria — currently amounted to only 12 percent of Turkey’s total, although this was up from only three percent three years ago.
“In the medium term we will increase it to 30 percent,” he said, noting that exports in the first nine months of the year showed a rise of 62 percent to Syria, 56 percent to Iran and 50 percent to Greece compared with the same period of 2002.
10/14/03 10:48 ET |
Akgün Medya