Minister: Turkey hopes to see FTA with India signed soon
Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Minister: Turkey hopes to see FTA with India signed soon
21 April 2011
Foreign Trade Minister Zafer Çağlayan has said a free trade agreement (FTA) between Turkey and India should be signed as quickly as possible to make the best out of what he described as the tremendous trade potential between the two emerging economies.
“We should sign an FTA as soon as possible. The problems encountered [for instance] as a result of visa requirements present obstacles to trade,” he said, speaking at the Turkey-India Business Forum held in New Delhi on Tuesday. Turkey currently has FTAs with 14 nations as well as with members of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), a free trade organization of four non-European Union member states in Europe.
During his speech he drew attention to how little the bilateral trade between Turkey and India was last year compared to the size of both economies and their respective trade volumes. “We are particularly working on the Indian market. When you analyze India’s imports and Turkey’s exports, we see a 45 percent match. This is excellent; only a handful of countries have that kind of a similarity. As a matter of fact, we are selling the very goods you are buying but we cannot benefit from it because we do not know each other as well as we need to,” he said.
In 2010, the trade between the two countries was recorded at almost $4 billion, eight times more than it used to be at the beginning of the millennium. “But this is still too small. While our aggregate trade volume is approaching $1 trillion, the bilateral trade between us does not even constitute 1 percent of it. We want this to be increased,” he explained. Of last year’s bilateral trade with India, over $3 billion was from India’s exports to Turkey, while the value of Turkey’s exports to India was less than $1 billion. “This trade needs a balancing touch,” the Turkish minister said, referring to this imbalance in Turkey-India trade. A total of 150 businesspeople from Turkey accompanied Çağlayan at the forum in New Delhi on Tuesday. The Turkish delegation will attend another similar event in Mumbai, the most populous city in India.
Turkey can be India’s gate to Europe, Africa and Mideast
As part of his speech at the forum, Çağlayan also urged the Indian businesspeople in attendance to invest in Turkey, arguing that such investments can be the South Asian nation’s ticket to increased business activities in, and especially trade with, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. He underlined that Turkey’s political and economic stability as well as rapidly developing relations with these three regions is something Indian businesspeople should consider while deliberating on whether to expand abroad. “Do not think because you speak English better than we do that you can export more to the UK. Our experience related to the European market is quite vast. The markets we export to the most are Germany, France and the UK. If you want to export to Europe, the country you should come to is Turkey,” he said with a touch of humor. He added that Turkish and Indian companies should also partner in joint investments in third countries.
Turkish company to start $420 mln construction project
After the forum, Çağlayan attended the signing ceremony of a deal between Turkish construction firm Fernas Group and the Indian petrochemicals company ONGC Petro Additions, Ltd., for the construction of a $420 million facility in the western Indian state of Gujarat. This is going to be the third project Fernas carries out in India. Previously, the company built a $100 million pipeline in 2009 and won the tender for another $75 million pipeline in the east of the South Asian country. Through these three projects combined, the company is now employing over 3,000 Indians.
Speaking at the ceremony, Çağlayan invited Indian energy companies to bid for projects in Turkey, reminding them of the more than $120 billion in energy investments the country plans to make over the next 10 years. India’s minister of petroleum and natural gas, Jaipal Reddy, was also present at the ceremony on Tuesday. He said they are conducting transparent public tenders and that their doors are always open to Turkish companies, which he underlined will be treated the same way domestic companies are. He added that his government will do its best to improve India’s trade relations with Turkey.
