Turkish State Minister for economy Ali Babacan said the 9.8% rise in Turkey’s October industrial production showed it was time to make an upward revision in Turkish Government’s 2010 annual growth projections.
In his address at the 5th Sectoral Economy Council meeting, Babacan said Turkey’s industrial production index saw a higher than expected surge in October, a major indicator in his words promising an annual growth surpassing the government’s projections.
Babacan who pointed out that the Turkish economy grew 11% in H1, said OECD projected an annual growth of 8.2% for Turkey in 2010. He said IMF expected Turkey to grow 7.8% while EU projected an 7.5% annual growth.
“Regardless of from which point you look at, Turkey will be the fastest growing economy in Europe this year and the next year,” said Babacan.
Turkey’s statistical board, TurkStat, announced Wednesday that the country’s industrial production index rose 9.8% year-on-year in October.
Could the next generation of New York City “yellow cabs” end up coming from Turkey? Karsan, a major Turkish automotive company, certainly hopes so now that it was chosen to be among the three finalists in the city’s competition for a new cab.
Karsan’s somewhat futuristic-looking entry was the only one expressly designed to be a cab, as opposed to a retrofitted model, and is designed to have room for five (plus a stroller) and be wheel-chair accessible. CNN has the story.
For Turkish automotive history buffs, it may be worth noting that Karsan’s chief is Jan Nahum, the same man who in the mid-1970’s designed the “Bocek,” a dune-buggy like car that was supposed to be Turkey’s answer to the VW Beetle Buggy. In fact, after looking at photos of the “Bocek,” it would appear that some of the Turkish bug’s DNA has made it into the design of the proposed NYC cab of the future. More on the “Bocek” here.
via Will the Next NYC Taxi Come from Turkey? | EurasiaNet.org.
Turkish State Minister for foreign trade Zafer Caglayan has invited Canadian businessmen to invest in Turkey.
Tuesday, 07 December 2010 16:44
Turkish State Minister for foreign trade Zafer Caglayan has invited Canadian businessmen to invest in Turkey.
Addressing the Turkish-Canada Business Forum in Istanbul on Tuesday, Caglayan said Turkey provided the most comprehensive incentive system for research and development.
“Turkey will invest $110 billion in energy sector over the next ten years. Canadian nuclear energy firms are welcome to engage in talks for the construction of Turkey’s second nuclear energy plant,” said Caglayan.
Caglayan said Turkey exported over 20,000 different items to 221 of the 224 customs zones.
“The region we reside in is very significant. If Canadian companies want to take their place in this region, it goes through Turkey,” said Caglayan. He said Turkey was a major supply center at the heart of Caucausus, the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, at a four-hour flight away from 56 countries, urging Candian Trade Minister Peter van Loan and Canadian businessmen to realise Turkey’s significance.
Caglayan listed energy, environment, innovative technologies and green energy as possible areas of cooperation between the two countries.
“The implementation of free market rules, unrestricted transfer of profit and capital, unrestricted foreign exchange transactions… with its logistics, human resources, 73 million population with an average of 28 years of age, easy access to neighbouring countries, free trade agreements with 17 countries. When you add these up, Turkey offers great advantages,” said Caglayan.
He said Turkey had free trade agreements with majority of the European countries, adding that companies making investments to Turkey would seize all the advantages of Turkey.
Ford Motor, which helps operate this auto plant in Kocaeli, Turkey, is expanding its joint-venture operations in the country.
ISTANBUL—Turkey, rarely thought of as a global automotive hub, will this year overtake the Czech Republic as the biggest car maker in Eastern and emerging Europe outside of Russia, according to industry forecasts.
Turkey is producing almost one-third more cars this year than last, said the country’s Automotive Manufacturers’ Association, in a rebound that underscores the dramatic recovery of the nation’s economy from the global financial crisis.
Sales of cars and light commercial vehicles in Turkey were up 31% this year through November compared with a year earlier, according to figures released Monday, and manufacturers say they are struggling to meet demand.
According to industry analysts IHS Automotive, that puts Turkey on track to produce 1.05 million vehicles this year, more than the Czech Republic or Slovakia, which, aided by low-cost skilled labor, became the car-making powerhouses of emerging Europe after joining the European Union in 2004.
Turkey’s auto boom goes a long way to explain the country’s growing international confidence, said Ali Pandir, chief executive of Tofas, Turkey’s biggest car maker. With an economy that expanded as fast as China’s in the second quarter, politicians and companies here are expanding relationships in the Middle East and Africa, even when that causes tension with Washington or the European Union.
“Turkey is developing into a globally competitive auto hub, largely under the radar. It has a huge domestic market and the government appears to be reforming the economy in a way investors find attractive, so its growth is likely to continue,” said John Wormald, director of Autopolis, an auto-industry consulting firm.
Auto exports are surging. Seven out of every 10 vehicles made in Turkey are exported, and much of the expansion is coming in the Middle East and Northern Africa, helping to pick up slack for softer demand in crisis-riven Western Europe, according to data from the Turkish Automotive Manufacturers’ Association. The $22 billion auto industry employs more than 230,000 workers, and accounts for 20% of Turkey’s total exports, according to Deloitte, a financial-advisory firm.
Chery Automobile Co. of China committed last month to build a factory to assemble cars for the European market here. Ford Motor Co. and Renault SA’s local partners are expanding operations—in Renault’s case with a commitment to build some of its new Fluence electric cars in Bursa, some 155 miles south of Istanbul.
Other parts of the automotive-supply chain are also betting on Turkey. German auto-parts supplier Mann & Hummel Group last month said it would start production in Turkey within two years and that Istanbul would become its base for expanding operations in the Middle East and former Soviet Union.
Still, Turkey’s car industry faces hurdles. There are no domestic Turkish brands, while sizable sales taxes on cars and gasoline have long suppressed demand. Taxes on car sales add 89% to the price of a 1.7-liter Ford Mondeo, while for a luxury car like a Ferrari the tax rises to 112%.
Even now, many of the cars made in Turkey are slightly older designs aimed at less-wealthy buyers both here and in poorer markets.
So far, there is no sign the government would lower auto-sales taxes. In fact, this year the taxes rose when the government removed a discount granted as part of a stimulus package during the financial crisis.
In Turkey “people evade taxes, but they pay their taxes as they buy their cars,” said Ali Babacan, deputy prime minister for the economy at a recent conference in Istanbul. Noting that car sales are up despite a tax increase, he said he won’t be cutting them soon.
Analysts caution that the current boom in car sales could be short-lived. “We have some pent-up demand which is flattering the market—and going forward that will be removed,” said Alper Paksoy, an analyst at EFG Securities in Istanbul.
Yet for car makers, other trends bode well. Middle-class Turks have been getting richer quickly in recent years. Turkey’s gross domestic product per capita was just $2,900 in 2001, lower than Mexico’s, but it had more than quadrupled to $13,905 in 2009, according to World Bank figures.
(Updates with result of third auction in first, third, seventh paragraphs.)
Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) — Turkey drew total bids of $5.1 billion in auctions of three power grids in the Asian half of Istanbul and in the southern cities of Adana and Antalya.
MMEKA Makine Ithalat Pazarlama & Ticaret AS, controlled by businessman Mehmet Emin Karamehmet, former chairman of the country’s biggest mobile phone company, placed the winning bid of $1.8 billion for the network in Istanbul, beating 10 rivals in the auction in Ankara today, according to Ahmet Aksu, the head of state asset sales.
The results give MMEKA control of the grid in both halves of Turkey’s biggest city and brings to $15.9 billion the total bids in the country’s drive to divest control of power distribution to non-state companies. Today’s auction completed the sale of grids in the hands of Aksu’s sales agency.
Turkey is selling grids and generators to attract private investment to an industry where demand is set to rise 6 percent annually, according to estimates published Nov. 9 by Deloitte LLP. The country needs as much as $150 billion in energy investment by 2023, Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said Nov. 24.
MMEKA in August offered $2.99 billion for the grid on the European side of Istanbul. Controlling all of Istanbul will allow the company to “optimize” supply, Mehmet Kazanci, Karamehmet’s partner, told reporters after the sale. He declined to comment on financing for the company’s bids.
Adana Network
Yildizlar SSS Holding AS won the auction of the Adana grid with a bid of $2.1 billion. Ankara-based Yildizlar owns silver mining company Eti Gumus AS and bought the grid in the western Osmangazi region in June for $485 million.
Park Holding AS, the group of companies owned by businessman Turgay Ciner that has interests from power generation to media, placed the winning bid of $1.2 billion for the grid in Antalya in the last of the sales.
The asset sales agency has now sold 18 grids in auctions this year and last. Some of those sales are yet to be completed and payment is likely next year, when the government aims for 13.7 billion liras ($9.3 billion) in revenue from selling assets, according to the medium-term economic program.
The agency received a total of 39 bids for today’s sales, it said last week. Bidders registered for the Istanbul grid sale include Enerjisa Enerji Uretim AS, the joint venture between Haci Omer Sabanci Holding AS and Austria’s Verbund AG. The Istanbul grid drew 11 bidders, Antalya 15 and Adana 13.
Istanbul Anadolu Yakasi Elektrik Dagitim AS, also known as Ayedas, serves about 2.2 million commercial and household subscribers in the eastern half of Istanbul, according to information given to reporters at today’s sale. About 7.5 percent of the grid’s energy is stolen, according to the website.
Akdeniz Elektrik Dagitim AS has 1.5 million subscribers around Antalya, with a theft rate of 9 percent. Toroslar Elektrik Dagitim AS, which provides power to 2.7 million subscribers in and around Adana, has a theft rate of about 8 percent.
–Editors: Alex Devine, Will Kennedy.
To contact the reporters on this story: Steve Bryant in Ankara at sbryant5@bloomberg.net; Ali Berat Meric in Ankara at americ@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Hirschberg in Jerusalem at phirschberg@bloomberg.net.
via Turkey Power Grid Auctions Draw $5.1 Billion in Bids – BusinessWeek.
Turkish State Minister Zafer Çağlayan (C), Ömer Vardan of MÜSİAD (second from R), Mehmet Büyükekşi of the Turkish Exporters’ Assembly (far right), Canadian Minister Peter van Loan (second from L) and Yılmaz Argüden, head of the Turkish-Canadian Business Forum, pose for the cameras during a press conference in Istanbul on Dec. 7, 2010.
Turkish State Minister Zafer Çağlayan (C), Ömer Vardan of MÜSİAD (second from R), Mehmet Büyükekşi of the Turkish Exporters' Assembly (far right), Canadian Minister Peter van Loan (second from L) and Yılmaz Argüden, head of the Turkish-Canadian Business Forum, pose for the cameras during a press conference in Istanbul on Dec. 7, 2010.
Turkey and Canada are exploring the possibility of signing a free trade agreement, according to a top businessman who spoke to the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review on Tuesday.
Speaking during a visit by a Canadian trade mission to Istanbul, Yılmaz Argüden, head of the Turkish-Canadian Business Forum, said Canada was preparing to sign a free trade agreement first with the European Union and then with Turkey.
Canada also officially opened a consulate in Istanbul during the visit.
The visit was jointly organized by the Foreign Economic Relations Board of Turkey, or DEİK, and the Independent Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association, or MÜSİAD.
“It is too early to say whether we should have a free trade deal or not,” said Peter van Loan, Canada’s minister of international trade. “We would like to consider this after a free trade agreement signed with EU,” he told the Daily News. Van Loan said Turkey, a strong economic performer with a dynamic market of 72 million people, has a “key place in the global economy.”
Disappointing bilateral trade
Noting that the bilateral trade is relatively low, Zafer Çağlayan, Turkey’s foreign trade minister, said Canada had a total trade volume of $800 billion in 2008 while Turkey had $300 billion of foreign trade in the same year. “Unfortunately, the volume between the two countries remained at only $1.2 billion,” Çağlayan said.
“Last year, Canada’s total imports were $327 billion, while Turkey’s exports to Canada stood at $330 million,” said the minister, calling for stronger trade relations.
Çağlayan also called for Canadian energy companies to invest in Turkey. “We were not able to reach an agreement with South Korea for Turkey’s second nuclear power plant. Canadian firms are welcome to bid on constructing the plant.”
“Canada has great expertise in clean technologies and especially nuclear power plants,” said van Loan, noting that Canadian firms are interested in energy investments in Turkey. Canada accounts for 10 percent of the global nuclear energy market, while the country’s nuclear energy industry is valued at $6.6 billion annually, according to Atomic Energy of Canada.
Canada’s Istanbul consulate was opened in the high-rise office tower of Tekfen, located in the Levent financial district. The consulate mainly aims to serve Canadian and Turkish businessmen but does not accept visa or immigration applications. The consulate will be led by Michael Ward.
Çağlayan said a Turkish Trade Center and a Turkish Trade Consultancy would be opened in Toronto next year.
Turkish State Minister for economy Ali Babacan said the 9.8% rise in Turkey’s October industrial production showed it was time to make an upward revision in Turkish Government’s 2010 annual growth projections.
