Turkey attracts $13B investments annually since 2002

By Engin Ozekinci

KONYA, Turkey (AA) - Turkey has been attracting on average $13 billion in investments annually since 2002 while the country received $200 billion investments over 15 years, head of the country's investment agency said on Monday.

"This is a serious amount. But we never found it to be enough," Arda Ermut, president of the Investment Support and Promotion Agency (TYDTA) of Turkey and the World Association of Investment Promotion Agency (WAIPA), told Anadolu Agency.

"Therefore, our aim is to attract more investments, especially with high-added value," he said.

Ermut said Turkey is starting to take investments from alternative regions such as East Asia and the Middle East.

The country continues to attract investments from every sector, and a substantial part of the investments are still coming from Europe, he said.

He said investments from Europe are often in the finance, machine, science and technology fields.

"The investments from the Middle East and Far East Asia are in the fields of petrochemical, energy and real estate areas," he said.

He said Europe had been affected the most by the 2008 global crisis.

"Our investments were also influenced by the fact that most direct investments were from Europe."

He also said: "Turkey is indispensable for investments for Europe because our productivity rates are very high."

He said easy access to regional markets, high quality human resources, senior management quality and a young population are reasons for investments.

Due to our strategic position, we can reach 1.6 billion people and $24 trillion of gross domestic product with a 4-hour flight distance, he added.

Investment from 28 EU states reached $2.72 billion between January and June this year.