ANKARA
Turkish Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan stated on Thursday that Turkey increased and developed its commercial, political and economic relations with Asia.
Speaking at the 2nd meeting of Asia-Pacific Regional Trade Advisors in Turkish capital, Ankara, Caglayan stressed the performance of exporters which contributed to achieve the 36.6 percent of drop in current accounts deficit in 2012.
He stressed that from Turkey's current accounts deficit point of view, the Asia-Pacific Region was really important for the increase in exports and decrease in imports.
Caglayan stressed that as both Turkey and Asia were having rising economies, in the scope of working in cooperation, the trade, political and economic relations were developed.
"The most important actor of the region, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is beneficial for our rising trading. Like the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, we would like to develop our relations more. I would like to mention that Turkey did not leave its EU target nor get away from the idea of that. This 50 years old struggle will continue until Turkey becomes a full EU member state."
He underlined that as Turkish economy ministry, they formed trade politics and started to visit countries all around the world with businessmen.
Moreover, Caglayan stressed that in general there was a drop in the international direct capital movements globally and added that direct investment which came from Asia-Pacific countries into Turkey was $2.2 billion and there were not any Asia-Pacific countries which had more than $1 billion investment in Turkey.
He said, there was two countries which had more than $500 million investment in Turkey and these were Japan with $787 million and Malaysia with $515 worth of investments in Turkey.
Turkish Economy Minister Caglayan noted that not only in the field of economics, yet in the areas of history, politics and culture, Turkey had rooted relations with Asia-Pacific countries.
Caglayan suggested that they would like to extend trade relations with Australia and New Zealand and added that in mid 2012 they plan to visit these countries with delegations and businessmen.
He highlighted that Mongolia, China, Afghanistan, Indonesia and Bangladesh would be the most growing countries in the region and warned attaches to make use of opportunities from these countries.
Lastly, he reminded that in 2012, Turkey broke exportation records with 97 countries and noted that 13 of those countries were from the Asia-Pacific region.
